Shoot (8 page)

“Amy, it’s Shepherd. Are you still following me?”

“What the hell would I do that for?”

“That’s what I thought. Forget it. See you soon.”

I stopped at the crosswalk at Fifth Avenue, forcing people to move around me, a herd around a tree. I ducked around the light pole on the near corner and snuck a peek back. I couldn’t see anyone. I crossed against the light and moved swiftly into the park, the shortcut to my Westside meeting. In the park, I sprinted up a rocky rise and hid inside the nearest clump of thick trees. A group appeared at the entrance— four young, pumped steroid-neck white guys in uniform blue pants. Not uniforms. Pressed skinny jeans, with sharp creases, white silk shirts open halfway down their muscled chests, gold glittering at their necks, collarless black leather jackets, perfect black hair. It was the most formal version of casual clothes I had ever seen. They looked like a retro a cappella singing group. The guy in the lead was wearing a small fedora, also black leather. One of those neo-hipster hats. Sitting atop the brim was an expensive pair of dark plastic sunglasses, the kind that idiots paid a thousand bucks for. Like the hat was wearing shades. Cute.

They were walking fast now, looking around. I slid behind the thickest tree. They approached and passed by. Young voices, stupid. Brooklyn accents and Italian names: Vinnie, Tony, Bobby, Jay-Jay. They were moving faster, clearly panicked they had lost me. The hat kid, Jay-Jay, was getting pissed and was blaming it on the others. I had to chuckle at the bozos in their little outfits. Junior Mafia action figures. A thousand pounds of juiced muscle between them but not one who felt eyes.

Who the hell were they? Or, rather, who had sent them and what did they want? Did they just want to find out where I was going and who I was meeting? Or did they have something nastier in mind? Ginny Mac had followed me before, trying to steal my story. She mugged me once in bed and, when that no longer worked, she sent her two big brothers to beat me up. Did she send these clowns? Or was this how billionaire Trevor Todd was going to take his revenge on me for revealing his newspaper as a criminal racketeering scam that used bugging, spying, theft and even murder to get a story? Whoever wanted a piece of me, I didn’t have time for this shit right now. I was running late. Besides, when you have a choice between a victory with violence and a victory with no casualties—it was a no-brainer. When you win, you walk away in one piece and leave your enemy a way out. I left the park and hailed a cab.

I had to use my NYPD Working Press Pass to get into the brand-new Knickerbocker Convention Center on the West Side; one huge block of luxury high-rise hotel, auditoriums, shops, spas, restaurants, waterfalls, bars, concert halls; a small, self-contained city. The GOP National Convention was about to start and the security was serious. In addition to NYPD cops, there were feds, Homeland Security and lots of plainclothes. The streets around the center were closed, with concrete vehicle barriers, security checkpoints and armored personnel vehicles, bomb trucks, canine units and communications trucks, all gearing up for the nationally televised kickoff tomorrow, on the Fourth of July. The Republicans were again holding their presidential extravaganza in the camp of their supposed enemy—liberal New York City. Of course, Manhattan was media ground zero, so I guess it made sense. It did seem funny that all these law enforcement folks were getting overtime to protect the right-wingers from the left-wing demonstrators, who were sure to show up to protest the Tea Party candidates.

I had not yet been inside the Knickerbocker Convention Center. It was impressive. They had full airport-style body scanners, and a K-9 cop with a sniffer dog was checking bags. After I went through and my backpack was searched, I was asked to turn on my laptop. I took the MacBook out of its case and fired it up. When they saw my computer was real and not a bomb, I was cleared for entry.

Amy, again clad in black Italian fashion, met me in the East Lobby, a ten-story atrium with an Amazon rainforest and waterfall. Like a kid from Kansas, I stared up at the waterfall and the giant fiberglass pterodactyls suspended fifty feet above my head. Clear vertical tubes against the back of the atrium housed large rounded elevators, also transparent, moving up and down. Amy looked askance at my New Balance cross trainers, jeans and blue polo shirt but she said nothing.

“Hi, Amy. Why flying dinosaurs?”

“Prehistoric Manhattan,” she replied. “The joke is that the valet parking is at this entrance, so the theme is Jurassic Parking.”

We both laughed.

“The other three are also time-travel atriums,” Amy said. “Old New York, Future New York, and… I forget the other one. We’re over this way. Third floor, Conference Room A, up two levels.”

We took a two-person-wide escalator up through the towering foliage to the Manhattan Mezzanine and then a second one up to the Hudson Mezzanine.

“So, you’re the reporter, I would like you to take shorthand while we talk with Chesterfield,” Amy informed me.

“I would like that too, but I don’t know shorthand,” I told her, “but I have a good memory. I have a digital recorder, too, and can take notes on my laptop.”

Amy scowled at me. Obviously, she had assumed all reporters took shorthand. I explained that I was only a pet columnist. She shrugged.

“You didn’t hire me for my secretarial skills, I assume.”

She smiled. “What was the deal with your Hardstein pictures in the paper today? A camera drone, right?”

“Yeah,” I said, surprised.

“Did you do it?”

“No, a photographer. He’s available. Do you use camera drones?”

She just smiled. Upstairs, we had to go through more metal detectors, and a shoe detector—even a “Sniffer” air booth to detect explosives.

We arrived at a set of very large double doors with a bronze plate that identified it as the H
UDSON
R
OOM
. A team of plainclothes Executive Protection Service agents were outside. Hands vanished inside suit jackets. Amy identified us and we showed ID but we had to submit our bags for inspection again. My recorder and laptop were also checked out. They took our cellphones, turned them off, removed the batteries and said they would keep them until we were done. This kind of in-depth, hair-trigger security was presidential level. Interesting. How were we supposed to do better? Inside the cavernous, carpeted three-story room, floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows overlooked the Hudson River. A single, long, large wooden conference table was parallel to the big window, with eighteen cushioned black leather armchairs, most along the side and one at each end. The room was empty. We sat on the near side, close to the left end. I noticed there were lots of boats in the river between Manhattan and New Jersey. An NYPD launch, a Coast Guard cutter, and a giant US Navy destroyer, the USS
John McCain
, equipped with automated five-inch gun turrets, missile launch bays and Phalanx high-speed anti-aircraft, anti-missile Gatling guns. Without doubt the vessel also carried nuclear-tipped Tomahawk and Harpoon missiles.

These people were very serious about security.

“Let me do the talking,” Amy told me.

“Sure, boss,” I said, placing my backpack on the table.

A flying wedge of new security suits burst into the room. Behind them, in an ash-gray suit, white shirt and red power tie, followed the candidate, Speaker of the House Percy Chesterfield; bronzed, bored, and sucking on an unfiltered cigarette. The GOP politician reached for Amy’s much smaller hand and pumped it, as she introduced herself and me. The guy who shut down the US government over health insurance and almost sparked a worldwide financial crash to improve our economy—and was threatening to do it again—did not reach for my hand. We sat. Chesterfield fired up a new smoke, the brown tobacco and red glow of flame combined in a burnt-umber orange color that matched his skin. Either this guy used spray tan or he was some kind of new mutant. An agent set down a large cut-glass ashtray within reach. Amy started to talk but Chesterfield cut her off and looked at me.

“Hold it. I served in Congress with Senator Richard Hardstein for many years. Are you the same guy in the
Daily Press
today—the reporter who caught poor Dickie Hardstein with his pants down?” he asked in a deep, raspy smoker’s voice.

Uh-oh. It looked like my tabloid work might be a problem.

“Yes, sir.”

“That was tragic. Terrible. Where is it?” Chesterfield bellowed to his guards. “The paper I was reading?”

It appeared magically in his hand. He held up the front page. HARD-OFF!

“There you are, on the front page,” Chesterfield said. “I knew it! You wrote this!”

This was not going well. Then Chesterfield began laughing hysterically. He pointed to the black box over Hardstein’s afterlife erection and laughed until tears came from his eyes. He got up and came over to me. I stood up. He shook my hand firmly and slapped me on the back. As he raised his arm, his suit jacket opened and I could see a black leather holster containing a bejeweled red, white and blue semiautomatic pistol. Not surprising, I suppose, for a gun nut politico from a tobacco state like Virginia. He insisted one of the agents take a selfie of the two of us, with the
Daily Press
front page below us. He was grinning. I wasn’t. Amy also stood up, unsure what to do.

“I feel bad for Dickie but this is the funniest thing I have seen in years—Hard-Off!” Chesterfield chortled, exploding into more laughter. “He never could keep it in his pants. He giggled, wiping away tears. “Mr. Holy Liberal gets his dick caught in a sex scandal—and then drops dead before we can use it against him in an election. Nice career move, Dickie!”

He went on like this for a few minutes and then sat down, lit another cigarette, and returned to the business at hand.

“I’ll tell you I was very much against this when the National Committee brought this to me—a New York private eye who is also a reporter for a liberal rag—but there is no one I would like better on this than you,” Chesterfield told me, slapping my back again. “I think it’s bullshit, just a lot of hot air from dickless assholes, but I know I can trust you and Amy. As long as the party pays for this, I’ll play ball, providing we keep it quiet. I don’t want to look like a pussy. I’ve got better security than the president, but I will cooperate—whatever you need.”

He was spending a lot of time playing this down, this armed super patriot, but I got the impression that somewhere behind the stone face, he was worried.

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker,” Amy jumped in. “We need all the threat details. I understand there is a large volume?”

“Only if you think fifty thousand death threats is a large volume.” Chesterfield smirked. “Let ’em try.”

He called for and introduced us to his chief of staff, Tiffany Mauser, who looked like a Bond girl. In a soft southern lilt, she promised to email us details and follow up by phone. His head of security, a bald man called Karl Bundt, who was wearing yellow Oakley shooting glasses, joined the party. He also exchanged emails and numbers with us, so he could pass on his information.

“I have some stuff from the Secret Service, FBI, and ahh… other agencies you might find interesting. You both have security clearances, right?”

“Yes, of course,” Amy said.

Now I was beginning to see why Amy hired me on short notice. I had a security clearance. Or, I did. Why did she have one? She claimed she did no government work. We would have to talk. We all shook hands and set a face-to-face situation report within twenty-four hours, once Amy and I had gone over the material. Chesterfield pulled me aside, arm around my shoulder, his grating yet pleasing voice in my ear, the scent of fresh bourbon in my nose.

“Tell me, buddy, you’ve seen this sex video?” he drawled.

“No, sir. I saw a feed of it as it happened. I haven’t seen the video since.”

“So, how did old Dickie do with those two ladies?” he asked.

“He was doing great right up until the part where he dropped dead.”

“A shame. But he really fucked himself. He couldn’t stop screwin’ around—even after he got his dick caught in a newspaper press.”

“That’s true, sir.”

“Why did he do it?” Chesterfield asked.

“I don’t know. Compulsion, maybe? You’d have a better idea than I would, Mr. Speaker.”

“Why would I know?” he asked, with a nervous glance at Tiffany.

“You knew the man, sir. For years.”

“Oh, of course. Right. Compulsion, I’m sure you’re right.”

Again, he lit up and we lit out. I threw my backpack back on. I never got a chance to take out my laptop or my recorder. A member of the “Chesterfield for America” team gave Amy and me official all-access convention IDs on red, white and blue lanyards. On the way down the escalator, descending into the Jurassic Parking lobby, Amy sighed with relief.

“I thought we were dead there for a second, but we’re in. He loves you.”

“I think he’s peachy, too. I thought you said you don’t do government work?”

“I don’t.”

“I know why I had a security clearance. So I could be sent to jail if I ever revealed any military fuck-ups. Why do you have one?”

“I don’t. I meant since you have a security clearance,
we
have a security clearance—the firm. Officially, you are the only one reading this stuff.”

“That’s sneaky and probably illegal,” I told her. “If there is anything you shouldn’t see, I won’t let you see it.”

“For cripes’ sake, what a boy scout,” she grinned.

“I wish people would stop calling me that. It’s not just orders or ethics or morality or whatever.”

“What, then?”

“Thirty years in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. When do we start?”

“We’re on the clock already. We’re going back to my townhouse to start going through all this stuff.”

“Now?”

“Of course now. All night, if we have to. Your lazy life as a reporter is over. I have a spare room you can crash in.”

I told her I needed to pack a few things and tell Jane I was diving into the new case and would be working full bore. Amy gave me two hours to prepare and the address of her Greenwich Village townhouse. It seemed like everybody in New York had a townhouse except me. I walked quickly, looking for a cab, but everybody wanted cabs at lunchtime. You could only get a cab in Manhattan when no one else wanted one—including you. I jogged into the park and ran faster, my backpack bouncing rhythmically. By the time I neared Jane’s block, I was sweaty but feeling good from the run.