Popcorn (21 page)

THIRTY-FOUR

O
utside they were waiting for pictures. The media, the police and, increasingly, the nation were all waiting for pictures, because the siege was now the number-one news story US-wide.

“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 gung-ho, macho assholes, Neanderthals who couldn’t wait and talk like responsible adults but had to barge in like the over-excited 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 film-maker 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.

“Bull-double-shit,” said the SWAT commander.

THIRTY-FIVE

I
nside 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, never-to-be-forgotten, 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 wake-up 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.”

“Daddy, be nice,” Velvet pleaded, but Bruce did not even hear her.

“That’s the risk you take,” he continued. “Put your case, see if you can beat mine. If you win, you
really
win: the nation will never forget you or forgive me. If you lose, I honestly don’t think you’re any worse off.”

“Don’t do it, hon. Your plan’s better. Just make him say the stuff.”

But Wayne was intrigued. “Well, I don’t know, babe. I mean, I think we’ve got a pretty good argument here. Let’s face it, half the Republican Party plus just ‘bout every preacher in the country reckons Bruce here’s the devil incarnate…”

For the umpteenth time that terrible night, Bruce allowed himself a moment of hope. “Think of your image, Scout,” he said. “What do you want that camera to see? A couple of sullen thugs on a couch, or good-looking, articulate anti-heroes? If you survive all this and avoid the chair, you’ll be on every teen T-shirt in the country. You’ll be able to name your price.”

This was the right button to press for Scout.

“You really think we’ll be stars?”

“Of course you will. This is national TV. Win or lose, half the country’s going to fall in love with you. In actual fact you can’t lose.”

“You want to be a star, baby doll?”

“Of course I do, honey, but…Oh, I don’t know…”

Meanwhile the outside world was getting impatient, and poor Kirsten, the recordist, crouching in her underwear in front of Bruce’s fireplace, was getting the sharp end of their anger.

“What the hell is going on, Kirsten?” The producer’s voice screamed along the cable link and into her headset radio receiver. “When are we going to see some pictures?”

The producer completely ignored the delicate nature of Kirsten’s situation, demanding, as TV producers often do, that everyone be told to jump to the command of the cameras. In some ways it was not his fault. He had a whole line of senior producers, editors, section chiefs and channel-controllers crushed into his ENG truck, not to mention the chief of the LAPD, accompanied by an angry man in a flak-jacket who kept muttering, “Bullshit. Bull-double-shit.” Outside the truck there were countless more police and media operatives milling around, and all of them, inside and out, were demanding that the producer punch up some visuals pronto.

“What’s going on, Kirsten? Talk to me,” he shouted into Kirsten’s headset. “We have over two hundred stations nationwide requesting footage, and all the majors have crashed into their schedules. We can’t broadcast pictures of the outside of his house for ever. The studio anchors are running out of crap…”

The studio anchors were indeed getting a little desperate.

“Our cameras are still located outside the Delamitri mansion,” Larry and Susan were able to confirm for the millionth time. “And we have with us an expert on the exteriors of celebrity homes. Doctor Ranulph Tofu, of the New Age Academy of Astral Learning, will be able to give us a reading on Bruce Delamitri’s state of mind, based principally on the colour of his garage doors.”

In the control truck they were tearing out their hair.

“What are we waiting for, Kirsten?”

The producer got no reply. Kirsten heard him but said nothing, so he kept on shouting, turning up the volume until Kirsten’s head shook.

“How long does this jerk think we can tie up the networks on his behalf? Ask the asshole what he thinks he’s doing.”

In his desire to make TV, the producer was forgetting that Kirsten was ten feet away from a mass murderer. She rightly felt that to ask the asshole what he thought he was doing was not tactically the right way to go about things. But she had to say something, if only because, after ten minutes of her producer’s voice screaming directly into her brain, a bullet in the head was beginning to look like a reasonable option.

“Excuse me,” she said, trying to appear as detached an observer as possible, “the people in vision control are asking what kind of timescale we’re looking at here. Just so they can give you the very best coverage they can. They don’t want to lose the audience we’ve built up.”

Wayne looked at Bruce and made a decision. “You want to debate me, Bruce? Let’s do it.”

“And will you let Farrah and Velvet go afterwards? Will you let Brooke get to a doctor?”

“Maybe. I never know what I’m gonna do, Bruce. It’s my job: I’m a maniac.”

Kirsten finally spoke into her talkback. “Stand by in the truck.” She turned to Wayne. “OK, Mr Hudson, they’re ready whenever.” She was desperate to get out of that room and into some clothes.

“You ready, Scout?” Wayne enquired. “Ready to be a TV star?”

Suddenly Scout realized the enormity of what they were about to do. She hadn’t checked her hair, her make-up, her clothes…“Oh Wayne, I look a sight. Can they send in someone to do make-up?”

“You look gorgeous, honey. Brooke did your hair just peachy. Are you ready, Bruce?”

“Yes I am, Wayne.”

“Can I give control a picture?” Kirsten asked.

Wayne said she could, and Bill turned his camera on.

“Speed,” said Bill. Kirsten flicked a switch. In the control van ten screens jumped into life and the assembled opinion-formers finally got what they wanted.

THIRTY-SIX

J
esus!” The producers and cops whistled as they caught their first glimpse of the little tableau Wayne had created.

“Stand by to broadcast,” Brad Murray shouted, forgetting for a moment in his excitement that, within the control truck, etiquette dictated that he should relay his commands via the producer.

Outside, in the grounds of Bruce’s mansion, a hundred hairsprayed anchors alerted the viewing public to the imminence of developments.

“I believe we should be getting pictures from inside of the Delamitri abode any moment now. It appears there’s going to be some kind of joint statement from the multimillionaire director and his captor, mass-killing Mall Murderer Wayne Hudson.”

In the studios, the anchors hurried to explain the situation yet one more time. “The ratings computer is fed by a representative sample of the nation as a whole, whose televisions are connected to a central monitor. This monitor can then give an instant picture of what people are watching. Wayne Hudson will be aware, quite literally second by second, how many people have tuned in.”

“We know that!” the viewers of America shouted as one. “You told us a million times. Get on with it.”

Inside the besieged house, Kirsten informed Wayne that control had a picture. “We can go live to air any time.”

“OK, let’s do it,” said Wayne.

“Let’s do it,” said the Chief of NBC News and Current Affairs.

“Yes, let’s do it,” his opposite numbers at the other networks and major cable stations agreed.

“Stand ready, you guys, in case we have to pick up the pieces,” the chief of police said loudly to his senior officers, attempting to remind the media types that there were people around who didn’t work in television.

“We’re live!” the producer screamed into Kirsten’s ear.

“We’re live, Mr Hudson,” Kirsten said calmly, “live across America.”

It hardly seemed real, sitting there as they were in Bruce’s lounge. Wayne grabbed Bruce’s remote control and flipped on the TV. Sure enough, there they all were on the screen, the framing exactly as Wayne had wanted it. He tried another couple of channels. There they were again, and again. Scout screamed in embarrassment, and buried her head in her hands. Wayne turned the sound down on the TV but left the vision on: he wasn’t taking any chances that the bargain would be broken.

“OK, Bruce,” said Wayne, trying to look calm and collected, “you’re the professional. Why don’t you just explain to people what’s going on?”

Scarcely able to believe it was real, Bruce addressed Bill’s camera.

“Um…Hullo, everybody. I’m sorry that your morning’s viewing has been disrupted but I guess you all know what’s going on here. I’m Bruce Delamitri, the film-maker. The two women you see manacled behind me are Farrah, my wife, and our daughter, Velvet. The wounded woman on the floor to my right is Brooke Daniels, the model—”

Brooke, whose condition had stabilized somewhat with Velvet’s help, croaked in protest.

“—I’m sorry, Brooke Daniels, the actress. Anyway, we are all prisoners of Wayne Hudson and his partner, Scout, whom you see sitting beside me.”

“Hey,” said Wayne, with nervous bravado.

“Hello, America,” Scout mumbled, her head still buried in her hands.

“So, introductions over. Let’s come to the point.” Incredibly, Bruce was beginning to enjoy himself. Here was his chance, the chance he had dodged the night before, the chance to take on the censors and reactionaries. And oh, such a chance. The Oscars podium paled in comparison to his current platform. What an opportunity! To face down two vicious, heavily armed murderers on live TV and bring them to some understanding of their personal responsibility for their actions. Bruce glowed with excitement. This would be a genuine moment in the social history of the United States, and he was to be the mouthpiece. He must be careful, he must concentrate. There must be no ‘legs of fire’ this time.

“I make films in which actors and stunt artists pretend to kill people,” he said. “Wayne and Scout actually kill people. Not long ago, they decapitated my security guard, and they shot my agent, Karl Brezner, dead in this very room — his corpse lies in my kitchen. They have also seriously wounded Ms Daniels here. They are, of course, the notorious Mall Murderers and have over the last few weeks slaughtered numerous other innocents. Is that a fair summary, Wayne?”

Wayne thought for a moment. “Well, Bruce, my sweet momma brought me up a Christian, so I guess I know that none of us is truly innocent, because even tiny babies are born with the original sin upon them, passed down to us all from Adam.”

“Is that why you shoot people? Because they’re sinners?” Bruce enquired, a sense of huge intellectual superiority welling up inside him.

“To tell you the truth, I don’t know why I shoot people. Partly, I guess, because it’s so easy.”

“Well, innocent or not, I think we can all at least agree that Wayne and Scout have made something of a habit of shooting people they don’t know.”

“That is the case,” Wayne admitted. “We sure do that.”

“So what has all this to do with me?” Bruce continued, sounding more like a schoolmaster every minute. “Well, Wayne and Scout have broken into my house and attacked my friends because they claim that I am in part responsible for their actions. They contend that in some way my work ‘inspired’ them to do what they do. Now, I of course utterly refute this puerile concept—”

“We never said you’d inspired us, Mr Delamitri.” Scout’s head finally emerged from her hands. “Now don’t you go putting words into our mouths.”

“Forgive me, I thought that was what this whole debate was about,” Bruce replied.

“Daddy, don’t be so patronizing,” Velvet cried out from the lampstand.

Wayne considered Bruce’s answer. “No, Bruce, Scout’s right. ‘Inspired’ is the wrong word altogether. I mean, it ain’t like we saw a guy and a girl shooting people in your movie and said, “Hey, I never thought of that. That’s what we should be doing.” ”

“So my work does not inspire you? Then I’m confused. I cannot imagine what other point you make when you seek to equate me with your crimes.”

Wayne knew when he was being talked down to. “It ain’t a direct thing, Bruce,” he answered sharply. “We ain’t morons. We didn’t walk straight out of
Ordinary Americans
and shoot the popcorn seller—”

Scout had been brought up to be honest. She couldn’t let this go by. “Actually, Wayne, we did.”

“Once,” Wayne conceded. “We did that once, that’s all. I must have seen
Ordinary Americans
fifty times, and only one time did I walk out and shoot the popcorn seller. What is more, that wasn’t because of no movie, it was because the stupid bastard in question was a popcorn seller who would not sell us any popcorn.”

In the control truck the producer nearly gave birth in horror. “For Christ’s sake!” he screamed into Kirsten’s ear. “Can’t you tell that dumb fucker to watch his dirty fucking mouth? It is ten thirty in the fucking morning!”

“Excuse me, Mr Hudson,” Kirsten interrupted nervously, “could you possibly moderate your language? We’re picking up a massive audience share but adult dialogue is going to cause problems. The children’s channel has already gone back to
Sesame Street
.”

“Yes, Wayne,” Scout scolded, “you watch your mouth, now.”

“Well, I’m sorry, honey, and I ‘pologize to you good people out there, specially if you’re watching with young people. But you know, what I’m describing here was a very aggravating situation.”

“Yes, honey, it was.” Scout turned to the camera as if she was speaking to a girl friend. “We’d just come on out of the movie and I said to Wayne to get me some popcorn and Wayne said, “Sure, honey pie. If that’s what you want I’ll get you a big bucket.” But the popcorn seller said he only sold popcorn before the movie, and it was after the movie so I couldn’t have none.”

“He was there, man.” Wayne appealed to the camera. “With the popcorn and the buckets and a scoop and a hat on and all that stuff, but he would not sell me none.”

“So you shot him?” Bruce enquired.

“Yes, sir. Yes I did. I shot that boy, because it ain’t as if the world’s short of assholes, now is it? The world is not going to miss one asshole more or less. Pardon me for my language.” He addressed this last to the camera.

In the control truck, there was furious debate about whether they could continue to broadcast such an intensely unpredictable situation live. Murder and mayhem were one thing, bad language was quite another.

Eventually it was decided that they could not censor the news while it was happening, that they had a duty to broadcast. They would, however, try to bleep out the strongest bits of Wayne’s language.

On the numerous screens in the truck and the many millions around the nation, Bruce was still trying to get to the core of Wayne’s argument. “So you shot the popcorn seller because he was an asshole? Not, and this is an important point, because you’d just seen a movie full of death and destruction?”

Wayne sounded almost weary. “Bruce, like I say, you are taking all this far too literally. Does anybody shoot a popcorn seller in
Ordinary Americans
?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“You don’t believe damn right. Fifty-seven people get shot in
Ordinary Americans
, did you know that?”

“I knew it was a lot.”

“Wayne counted them,” Scout said proudly.

“Well, of course I counted them, honey pie, or how would I know? They don’t put it up on the titles do they? Like, um, that damn film you liked,
Marrying and Dying
or something — there was some faggot in a kilt who should have died a whole lot earlier as far as I’m concerned, like before the damn film started.”

“
Four Weddings and a Funeral
.”

“That’s right. Well, Bruce here did not call his movie
Fifty-Seven Murders, Plus People Taking Drugs and Screwing Each Other
, did he?”

“I guess not, honey.”

“Then don’t talk dumb in front of the American people. I counted who got shot in your movie, Bruce. Cops got shot, drug dealers got shot, pregnant teenage girls got shot, an old lady got one straight through the colostomy bag — man, that was a great scene, Bruce. How do you think up that stuff?” Wayne turned to the camera to explain his enthusiasm. “There’s a shoot-out, right? And this sweet little old lady takes a stray and guess what, man? It goes through her colostomy bag, and do you know what she says? She says, ‘Shit.’ That’s all, just ‘Shit.’ I mean, man, is that a good line or what? Everyone in the movie house just cracks up. Pardon my language but it was in the movie and Bruce here did get an Oscar for it, so I guess it’s art.”

“I’m glad you liked it,” Bruce said woodenly.

“I sure did, but what I’m saying is, no popcorn seller got shot.”

Bruce was getting irritated. “So what’s your point? I thought you were claiming diminished responsibility on account of my influence over you. Isn’t that what all this is about?”

“Who was the guy who rang the bell and the dogs dribbled? Pancake or whatever. I saw a thing about him on
Timewatch
.”

“I think you mean Pavlov,” said Bruce.

“That’s right, Pavlov. Well, you ain’t no Pavlov, Bruce, and we ain’t no dribbling dogs. There ain’t nothing specific here. I am talking generally. I’m saying that you make killing cool.”

Bruce leapt at the point. So far his heroic battle had not been going quite as splendidly as he’d hoped. He had allowed himself to be sidetracked. He had to regain the initiative.

“No, Wayne. I make going to the movies cool. Let me put it plainly. You are sick,” He addressed the camera directly. “These two people are sick. They have erred from the acceptable norm. They have diseased and unbalanced minds. Did I unbalance them? Certainly not. Did society? I doubt it. No, they are simply sick. There have always been murderers and sadists. Long before there was TV and movies, people got killed and raped. Now—”

Bruce was on a roll, winding up to utterly discredit these sad nobodies with the massive force of his intellectual power. Unfortunately, Wayne interrupted him.

“Tell me something, Bruce. I’ve always wanted to know, do you get a hard-on when you make that stuff?” He said this with a wink at the camera. “I’ll bet you do, boy, ‘cos I admit it just thrills me. What’s more, I look round the movie theatre and I can see all the other guys and they’re just loving it too. Every one of them is just itching to haul out a gun and blast away. Of course, they don’t do it, but I can see them licking their lips and wishing, just the same.”

“That’s the point, Wayne, nobody
does
anything.” Bruce was slightly shaken. He wanted to keep the debate on what Wayne did, not on what he himself did. “It’s just a story.”

“It ain’t no story,” Scout protested. “First time I saw
Ordinary Americans
, I said to Wayne to tell me when the blood and gore happened so I could close my eyes. I guess I had my eyes closed just about the whole picture.”