Free No Man's Land by G. M. Ford

plop.
    “Jesus,” she whispered. “Can we run that?” she asked.
    “If we fuzz the face on the stiff, New York says we can put it
on . . . as is.” Marty checked his watch. “Maybe an insert on
tomorrow night’s show. All I need is the go-ahead from you and
we’ll pull the Norton piece. We can record you doing a lead and a
follow right here and e-mail it to L.A. They’ll take care of the
rest.”
    Melanie leaned back in her seat. “It’s pretty graphic,” she
offered. “We’ve never done anything quite that intense before.”
    Marty raised his hands above his head, brushing the low ceiling
with the jewel case.
    “Breaking new ground,” he chanted. “Pushing the envelope.”
    When she remained unconvinced, he went on. “Those forensic shows
are always in the morgue these days, prime time . . . showing burnt
dead bodies and such every night of the week.”
    Melanie shrugged. “Those things are simulated,” she said.
    “Paint and rubber.”
    “What’s the difference?” he wanted to know.
    She thought about perhaps explaining the difference to him but
immediately discarded the idea. Marty had been in Hollywood for so
long that, like so many others in the business, the distinction
between life on earth and life on the silver screen had been lost
somewhere in the bargain. Didn’t matter whether or not it was true.
What mattered was whether or not it looked good on the screen and
whether or not it put people in the seats, so to speak. “Good thing
they don’t put ratings on our private lives,”
    she thought to herself.
    She flicked a finger at the still-quavering screen. “This was
real, Marty. You could feel it. There was something . . .” She
searched for a word. “. . . something almost voyeuristic about
watching it.” She looked up at Marty. “Like I was watching a
snuff film or something.”
    “We load the promos out there over the next thirty-six hours and
we’ll draw a bigger share than we’ve drawn in three or four
years. No way we can keep this one in the bag. It means too much to
all of us.”
    “What about the inside source? You as much as said the
authorities are gonna know where this thing came from.”
    “Ya pays yur money, ya takes yur chances,” Marty said, without
so much as a hint of a smile. “Come on, babe.” He was at his most
sincere now. “We gotta run with this. It’s now or never.”
    She let a long minute pass before she folded her fingers over her
chest and gave him an answer.
11

    The noise assaulted the ears like angry hornets . . . aloft, abuzz
. . . fifty stations spewing a swarm of jazz, honky-tonk, speed
metal, butt rock, rap radio . . . the shouts and grunts and groans,
the talk and the twang and the tonsils rolling out into the air,
where the concrete walls blended the bebop with the hip-hop, then
bounced it back to the inside track where the homies and the hurt
kicked back and relaxed.
    They moved along the edges of the cellblock walkways, trying to
separate themselves from the surrounding chaos. Driver and Kehoe were
on either side of Corso as they slipped among the acres of broken
furniture and burning mattresses littering the concrete floor. The
air was acrid and oily. Smelled of piss and Pall Malls. Here and
there, scattered knots of prisoners loitered. Some armed, some not.
Mostly up by the front windows where they could keep an eye on the
brightly lit perimeter and the front gate. At one landing lay a trio
of corpses, all piled helter-skelter on top of one another, throats
cut, bodies awash in a thick halo of dried blood. Halfway down C
Block, a hairy hand reached from the darkness of an open cell, caught
hold of Corso’s collar and jerked him backward into the darkness.
Whoever it was smelled of old blan-No Man’s Land kets and wet sheep
as he used his weight to drag Corso to the floor, where it took all
of Corso’s strength to keep from being yanked over onto his back.
Corso struggled for all he was worth. The guy moaned once and
adjusted his