The Guilty - Jason Pinter [118]
dozen reporters at the scene. Somehow you guys at the news
desks got wind of this before the cops did. Listen, Carruthers is on the rampage. I'll call you soon as I know anything."
Curt hung up.
"What'd he say?" Jack asked. His voice was scared, his
breath slightly sour.
"Nothing we don't know," I said. "But it seems like the
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news crews got tipped off somehow before the NYPD. There
might be a few reporters down there already."
The cab rounded the corner, arrived at 199 Water Street.
Or at least got as close as it could. Because when we saw the
crowd in front of the building, both of our jaws dropped.
Jack said, "I have a small quibble with your definition of
the word 'few.'"
Surrounding the building's entrance were at least a
hundred reporters and a dozen news vans. They lined the
street like a cattle drive stuck in Neutral.
"What the..." Jack said.
"Hell..." I finished.
Dozens of sports-jacketed journos were in the middle of
writing copy while news correspondents were already being
primped for their on-camera reporting. Cameramen were
pushing and shoving, jockeying for the best lighting to both
hide their stars' blemishes and capture the best angle of the
building behind them. It was an unmitigated madhouse.
And there wasn't a cop in sight.
"This has to be a mistake," Jack said. "I've never seen
anything like this."
"No way," I said. "This is no mistake."
Looking at the building, I could see several confused
people staring out their office windows down at the gathering outside, oblivious to what was going on just a few floors
above or below them. And in the time I took to assess the
situation, three more news vans pulled up, five more nattily
dressed reporters piled out, followed by several burly not-asnattily-dressed cameramen. They all joined the horde and
began applying makeup.
There were no cops anywhere to be seen.
Roberts.
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Jason Pinter
He couldn't have taken the office more than twenty minutes ago. That's when I spoke to Amanda. That's the last I
heard from her.
"Crazy son of a bitch," I said. "Roberts tipped off the press
before hitting Water Street. Only a sick fuck would call the
press prior to a crime he intended to commit. He called the
press so they'd show up before the cops. He wanted it like this."
"This isn't just one newspaper," Jack said. "I think everyone who's ever held a press badge is here. Informing a
thousand reporters about a hostage situation in New York is
like throwing a slab of rancid meat into an ant farm."
Roberts wanted the press to have the kind of unimpeded
access cops would normally prevent. Right now, the news
crews were free to roam. There was no yellow tape, nobody
holding the crowd back, no gruff detectives or crisis management teams giving inconvenient "no comments."
This was the very definition of a free press.
A reporter wearing a two-thousand-dollar suit and fiberglass hair walked up to the main entrance, cupped his hands
and peered inside. He cocked his head, turned back and
shouted, "Jesus, I think I see someone lying down behind the
security desk. I think I see blood, I think the security guard is
dead." He turned to the cameraman. "You think we should go
inside?"
His cameraman, six-four with a body that looked like it
was fueled at the local Krispy Kreme, carried the camera
over to him. He glared inside.
"Why not? Let me get a light reading, make sure this thing
will transmit."
Suddenly I was sprinting over to the entrance. I shoved fiberglass hair against the side of the building and pressed my
forearm into his chest.
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He struggled, tried to pry my arm away, yelped, "Get the
hell off me!"
"Goddamn it, you don't know who's watching. If you so
much as touch those door handles I'm going to break them
off and strangle you with them."
He could see in my eyes I wasn't kidding. He relaxed. So
did I. He smoothed out his jacket, told the cameraman, "We're
good out here." Then he turned to me. "I had a great spot out
front. If