Strangled - Brian McGrory [73]
I kid, for godsakes. I kid.
But not about the two dozen reporters and various cameramen and sound people with the boom mikes so strong they could pick up the rapid beating of my famously oversize heart and beam it clear as day to any fans out there on the moon. The reporters, some of whom I recognized either as old friends or Washington colleagues from my time in the capitol, or from watching TV, quickly surrounded me.
“Have you met the Phantom?” one perfectly coiffed man yelled above the din.
Let’s think about that for a second, perhaps on his behalf, because he obviously had not. Had I met the Phantom Fiend, wouldn’t I have gotten around to reporting that fact in the pages of my beloved Boston Record? Wouldn’t I have let people know on my own? Does he really believe I would have held back on my own employer and readers to first bestow such knowledge on the dozens of daytime viewers of FOX News?
Everyone fell completely silent and stared at me in hopeful expectation of a brilliant or newsworthy answer.
“I have not,” I said, sorry to disappoint, though not really.
“Why not?” a woman shouted.
Okay, so the questions were going to grow increasingly stupid.
“Because he hasn’t chosen to make himself available to me,” I replied, trying not to be terse. “I think he has a pretty good idea that I’m always available to meet with him.”
I started wondering if this was really what I did for a living, what these people were doing to me now, and I took instant pity on anyone I’d ever covered on the wrong side of the microphone and notepad. The necessary patience with the news media alone should qualify every public official for sainthood. Though maybe not.
One sweating cameraman was all but pressing up against me with the tools of his trade, so close that I thought he was going to bang my head on his camera. Another bespectacled scribe, obviously a print reporter, was carefully sizing me up from head to foot as he jotted notes on a legal pad. When I glanced upside down at his writing, I thought I saw the word pecs, but maybe not.
There were more shouted questions — how many times have I heard from him, have I been fully cooperative with police, why do I think he picked me. To that last one I replied, “Because I’m the best reporter I know.” I said this laughing. No one else in this circle jerk even cracked a smile. I made a mental note not to watch what would undoubtedly be the painful coverage on the midday news.
So I added, “I’m kidding. Guys, I’m not the story here, obviously. You know that already. I’m in this by happenstance. Could as easily be any one of you. And everything I know, you’ve already read in the Record. Anything I learn, you’ll read that there as well.” Not a bad little plug for my paper, I thought.
That’s when one second-tier network reporter, a woman with skin so tight and tucked she could have been a spokeswoman for Saran Wrap, said above the noise, “Jack, the police are complaining in this morning’s Traveler that they believe the Record is encouraging the Phantom to work through them, rather than directly with authorities. And by doing this you’re stymieing the investigation. Do you have any comment?”
I hadn’t read that, mostly because I hadn’t read the Traveler yet, which was no great loss lately, given how much they were slashing the budget of that paper. They’d been left so far behind on this story, which should have been right in their wheelhouse, that they were rendered irrelevant. Still, I could feel my face flush, partly in anger that Hal Harrison or Mac Foley would level such a stupid accusation, and partly in embarrassment over my foolish negotiating antics with the Phantom himself, or at least with someone I thought