Melody Marven felt doubly nervous.  She always became jittery just before a live report.  For taped reports, she could always start again if she flubbed a line or asked a stupid question.  And she didn't need to look stupid or end up on one of those horrible "blooper" shows.
     But the mob now assembling at the southwest corner of Central Park was starting to give off  a scary, menacing vibe.  Officially, it was an anti-Columbus demonstration, staged by those factions who disputed the Genoan's claim of having discovered the New World.  But those small groups of Aztec and Inca descendants, Norwegians, Indians, Irish, Chinese and others had become outnumbered by a swelling throng of idlers, the homeless, street crazies, rambunctious punks and a few brave tourists.  A scuffle had broken out on one side of the crowd, and now angry shouts were coming from another side.  Occasional derisive laughter punctuated the tension.
     In Columbus Circle, a few yards away, late Saturday-afternoon traffic roared around Gaetano Russo's heroic statue of the navigator, newly decorated with toilet paper and crude signs, among them "Columbus-Come-Lately," "Nice Try, Chris," and "Not!"
     Melody stood in the rounded wedge of asphalt bitten from the lower left-hand corner of the park near the immense U.S.S. Maine monument.  The crowd thickened around her and one of the organizers of the demonstration, whom she was about to interview.  She scanned the notes on her clipboard and listened through her earpiece for her cue.  She wore a collarless taupe suit over a white turtleneck, with pearl earrings, and she looked like a nervous mannequin.
     Lopez looked away from his eyepiece a moment toward the crowd and spoke softly to the sound man, who was grimly twisting knobs.  "You smell what I smell?"
     "Don't say it," replied Jerry Esposito, a superstitious, skinny young man from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. "Let's just do this and get outta here."
     Lopez said it anyway.  "I smell trouble."  He went back to his eyepiece and practiced the first shot. He got a close shot of Melody from the chest up, then moved back and wide to include her guest, Dr. Seamus Tormey, author of  But St. Brendan Was Here First.   Lopez went to a close-up of Tormey, a white haired, red-nosed, tweed-capped giant in an off-white woolen sweater.  Through his earpiece he heard the director say "Ten seconds."  He moved the shot over to Melody again.  He'd never seen her so tense.
     Now he heard the studio news anchor's introduction and, over it, the director's countdown, then "Cue Melody."
     "Thanks, Chuck.  I'm here in Columbus Circle, where the annual Columbus Day parade has ended with an unusual rally here in the shadow of the statue of the famous explorer.  Demonstrating today are representatives of groups that say the man who ‘sailed the ocean blue in fourteen hundred and ninety-two' was not the first to reach the New World."
     As Melody introduced Tormey, Lopez pulled the shot back, and as happens every time a camera is pointed somewhere, faces began to poke into the field of view, some smiling, some with tongue sticking out, some studiedly cool.  There was the general sort of clowning around and "Hi, Mom!" behavior Lopez had seen every day for years, but now there were more middle fingers and aggressive gestures.  A few "Fuck You!"s and an "Eat Shit!" made it over the air.
     From behind him Lopez could hear a chant, and it soon spread to the people near the camera and in front of it: "One-two-three-four!  Ain't a New World any more!  Five-six-seven-eight!  Show Columbus to the gate!"
     Esposito looked like a man being pricked to death by needles.  "Fuckin' animals," he muttered.  Filming news in New York City was a crap shoot, and this was shaping up as a bad roll.  Now the crowd pressed closer, and it was becoming hard to hear the interview.  Lopez looked around for the little blue-and-white police scooter he'd seen a few minutes before.
     "I say let's get outta here," said Esposito.
     "Suits me," said Lopez.
     Esposito stood and gave Melody the "wrap-it-up" gesture and alerted the studio. Through Lopez's viewer Melody looked distracted as she thanked Tormey in mid-sentence and began her wrap-up.
     In his earpiece Lopez heard the director swear.  "OK, you guys clear out.  But at least get a crowd shot."
     Esposito's answer came quickly.   "Trust me, Manny.  You don't wanna see this fuckin' crowd.  We'll be lucky to make it to the van."
     "Where's the cops?" asked the director.
     "Good question.  Make a call, willya?"
     "Will do.  Stand by in the studio.  We're coming back."
     Something in a paper bag whizzed past the camera.  The shouting increased.  Melody had nearly signed off when a plastic juice bottle hit her on the side of the head.  She wheeled around and began to shout angrily.  Another carton hit her in the back of the head.
     Things got worse fast.  The crowd pushed and shoved.  Some rushed away from the mob, others into it.  Melody stood, now petrified with fear.  Tormey, a few feet away, caught a beer can on the head and charged into the crowd like a bull.
     Lopez realized everything was going out over the air.  He was about to give Esposito his camera and go to Melody's aid when a great clamor came from his right side.  Instinctively he swung the camera and caught the crowd parting.  A shouting figure in black ran toward Melody.  He was wearing a black scarf on his head and a mask.
     "Zorro!"  The crowd spoke the name as if with one voice.  There were assorted cheers and hoots and screams and laughter.  Melody backed away from the man in black before her.  She opened her mouth but couldn't speak.
     "Happy Columbus Day, miss!" said the Son of Zorro.  He dodged a bottle and wrenched the hand-held mike from Melody's grip and whirled it around by its long cord.  A few roughnecks who had advanced backed off, but a bottle beaned the masked man on the back of the head and stunned him.  In an instant, someone snagged the microphone.
     A large, ugly, pale-faced kid in a black leather jacket and military boots danced up to the masked man and swung playfully at him, taunting him.  "Hey, Zorro!  Whattaya got, eh? Whattaya got?  C'mon!  C'mon!"
     The Son of Zorro shook his head to clear it.  He feinted with his left, kicked the kid hard in the groin, then dropped him with a powerful right that sent a shock of pain up the rescuer's arm.
     As the punk fell, two more youths approached menacingly.  The figure in black backed up a step and fell over someone who'd gotten down on all fours behind him.  The old schoolyard trick!  He hit the pavement and the crowd surged in.
     Lopez, who'd caught it all on his camera, now handed it to Esposito, who seemed near panic.  Lopez headed into the mob to get Melody, who spun in a desperate circle, fending off hands and jeers.  He'd just reached her when a police car pulled halfway into the plaza, lights and siren on full.
     The effect was immediate.  Fleeing bodies bounced off one another, scrambling into the park or up Central Park West.  Some dashed into the honking traffic of Columbus Circle.
     As Lopez led Melody to the van he saw the Son of Zorro throw off his lone remaining attacker and leap to his feet.  His scarf was half off and his mask a bit skewed, but he seemed all right.  He quickly turned his back to them and adjusted the scarf and mask.  Something about him seemed familiar.
     As two cops got out of the car and started toward him, the figure in black raced into the park and headed east.  He looked back and saw the cops starting into the park on foot.  When he reached the stone wall along Central Park South, he vaulted over it and ran across the street and behind a UPS truck.  He whipped off his mask and scarf to the astonishment of a few pedestrians and jumped into a taxi that had just dropped off a couple of fur-coated women at the corner of Seventh Avenue.
     The driver, a curly-haired, fortyish man identified on his license as Goldfarb, Dennis S., turned around and spoke through the plexiglass partition to his panting passenger.  "Tell me you didn't just rob a bank, Mr. Out-of-Breath."
     "No, I'm, uh, just real late.  Look, get me to Penn Station quick, OK?  I'll make it worth your while."
     "Speeding tickets I don't need.  But I'll do my best."
     "Thanks.  Go, please!"
     "I'm going, I'm going."
     The cab sped south down Seventh, the lights favoring it as far as W. 44th Street.  Rom heard a siren and barely checked an urge to turn around and look out the back window.  He pulled out some bills, put a five through the little window in the plexiglass and opened the door.  "Sorry. Gotta go.  Thanks."
     The cabby watched Rom walk briskly across Seventh and east on 44th.  He took the five and checked the fare: $3.80.  He snorted.  "Cheap bastard.  Robs a bank and gives me a buck twenty."  A horn blared behind him.  "Fuck you, too!"