Hard news - Jeffery Deaver [47]
“Rune.” A calm voice, a woman’s voice.
“Oh, hi.” It was Piper Sutton.
Should’ve cleaned up my desk, she thought. Remembering how neat the anchorwoman’s was. And seeing how neat she looked now, standing here in a dark red suit with black velvet tabs on the collar and a white, high-necked blouse and dark fleshy stockings disappearing into the slickest patent-leather shoes Rune’d ever seen. Shoes with high heels and one red stripe along the side.
Shoes that’d put me on my ass, I tried to wear them.
But, man, they looked cool.
“You’re busy.” Sutton’s eyes scanned the desk.
“I was just working on the story.”
Rune casually picked up several of the closest paper bags—one Kentucky Fried and two Burger Kings—and dropped them into, well, onto an overflowing wastebasket.
“You want to, like, sit down?”
Sutton looked at the ketchup packets that rested on the one unoccupied chair. “No. I don’t.” She leaned forward and ejected the tape that was in the Sony player, then read the label. “Brand X,” she said. “It’s from a competitor. You can’t use this footage, you know. I’m not putting a super in any of my news programs that says ‘Courtesy of another network.’ “She handed the tape back to Rune.
“I know. I’m just using it for background.”
“Background.” Sutton said the word softly. “I want to talk to you. But not here. Are you doing anything for dinner?”
“I was just going to John’s for pizza. They’re, like, real generous with their anchovies.”
Sutton walked away. “No. You’ll have dinner with me.”
“The thing is, there’s this person. Can they come with us?”
“I want to talk to you in private.”
“Anything you can say to me, you can say in front of her. She’s, you know, discreet.”
Sutton shrugged, took one last look at the desk and didn’t seem to like what she saw. “Whatever.” Then she scanned Rune’s pink T-shirt and miniskirt and fishnet stockings and ankle boots and she said, “You do have a dress, don’t you?”
Rune said defensively, “I’ve got two, as a matter of fact.”
She wondered what she was missing when Sutton laughed. The anchorwoman wrote out an address and handed it to Rune. “That’s between Madison and Fifth. Be there at six-thirty We’ll do the pretheater. Don’t want to spend more than we need to, do we?”
“That’s okay. My friend likes to eat early.”
YOU COULDN’T CALL IT A TIP. IT WAS A BRIBE.
Jacques, the maitre d’, took the money Sutton offered him and slipped it into the pocket of his perfectly pressed black tuxedo. However much it was—Rune didn’t see— the cash might have bought them access to the dining room but it did nothing to cheer up the poor, sullen man. He sat them at a table off to the side of the main dining room then surveyed Courtney. He said, “Maybe a phone book.”
Rune said, “Yellow and White Pages.”
Jacques pursed his unhappy Gallic lips and went off in search of the best child-seating device New York Telephone could offer.
Rune looked around the room. “This is like really, really amazing. I could get into it. Living this way, I mean.”
“Uhm.”
The theme of L’Escargot seemed to be flowers and— probably as with the food—excess was in. The center of the room was dominated by a twisty vined centerpiece, sprouting orchids and roses and baby’s breath. The walls held huge paintings of flowers. Rune liked them. They were what Monet would have done if he’d used electric-colored Crayolas instead of oil paint. Rune more or less matched the decor. She’d raced home to change into one of the two dresses, a purple-and-white Laura Ashley floral, which was her spring and summer dress. It was several years old but had very little mileage on it.
On the table in front of them was a bird of paradise in a tall glass vase and some kinky-looking green thing like a pinecone, which, if you were to see it in National Geographic, you wouldn’t be able to tell