Gannon often got nut-job calls like that and had first considered this one useless. It was short on details, anything he could use for confirmation.
But something about the tipster had gnawed at him.
“This is big! I swear to God, what I’m telling you is true!” the caller had said.
The guy had a nervous air of authenticity. He was scared. He’d called Gannon several times from public phones, refusing to give his name, occupation, address, anything. But he’d grown comfortable with Gannon and finally agreed to meet at a diner near Times Square.
“I’ll bring the confirmation you need.”
But Mr. Anonymous never showed and his calls stopped.
That was three days ago.
Gannon had told no one about it, adhering to his rules on tips.
Never tell an editor what you’ve got until you have it nailed. Editors either forced you to push your source until you lost them, or dismissed your tip outright. And with the way things were going at the WPA these days, he was not going to tell anybody what he had until he had it locked. It was the only way he’d guarantee support from the desk.
Instinct told him to pursue the tip, to find out what had happened to his source. Gannon secretly worked on it between other assignments. That’s what he’d been doing before he was punted to cover this waste of time.
Normally, the WPA, a worldwide newswire, wouldn’t staff a story like this; it was too local. But things hadn’t been normal at the WPA since Melody Lyon, the newswire’s most respected news editor, took a one-year leave three months ago to teach English in Africa.
Lyon was replaced by Dolf Lisker, a man who’d headed the WPA’s business coverage. Lisker had little experience leading news teams. He was a heartless slab of misery who loathed the world and everyone in it. He was obsessed with WPA’s slipping revenues.
Numbers—good numbers—were Lisker’s friends.
The WPA was headquartered in Midtown Manhattan where it oversaw bureaus in every major U.S. city and ninety countries, providing a 24/7 flow of fast, accurate information to thousands of newspaper, radio, TV, corporate and online subscribers everywhere.
Gannon was devoted to the WPA. Its reputation for excellence had resulted in twenty-five Pulitzer Prizes. But Lisker was wary of increasing competition from the Associated Press, Bloomberg, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, Deutsche Presse-Agentur, China’s Xinhua News Agency and Russia’s fast-rising Interfax News Agency.
“Each time subscribers take a competitor’s content over WPA content, we bleed,” Lisker wrote in his assume-command memo to the staff. “Treat every news organization as the enemy. Regard exclusives as our oxygen. We need to break stories and offer better ones than our competition. This is how we will fortify our numbers.”
Rumors flew that Lisker had presented the WPA executive with a “personnel efficiency model”—translation: “editorial cutback plan”—linking story pick-up rates to performance assessments of every WPA reporter.
The pressure was straining morale.
Gannon had felt Lisker’s sting a few hours ago. Lisker had walked by the news desk and overheard the call about a hostage taking in the Lower East Side. It had come from a WPA intern posted at the shack in NYPD headquarters at One Police Plaza.
“It’s got something to do with a dispute about an antique flintlock pistol that belonged to Napoleon.” When Lisker heard that, he stopped cold.
“Napoleon?” Lisker said to the assignment editor on the line with the intern. “That gives this a global hook. We should jump on it.”
“I’ll send the intern,” the assignment editor said.
“No.” Lisker looked at Jack. “Send Gannon.”
Gannon lifted his head from his keyboard. He’d been working on ways to find his anonymous caller. His monitor displayed his notes on his tip.
“But the intern’s closer,” Gannon said, closing his file.
Lisker approached, jabbing his finger at him.
“Listen up, hotshot! You’ve shown us zero since Phoenix, so get your ass down there now and get us a story on Napoleon’s pistol!”
Gannon grabbed his jacket, phone, notebook and recorder.
“Jack—” the assignment editor had his hand clasped over a phone “—Angelo Dixon is heading down in his car. He’ll pick you up out front.”
So now here he was with Dixon, waiting for this thing with Sylvester, Gustav and Napoleon’s pistol to wind down.
Dixon had one eye clenched behind his digital camera. Gently rolling his long lens, he shot several frames of a disheveled man crouched near a police car and talking to cops.
“This is crazy.” Dixon concentrated on the police chatter flowing into his ear. “You won’t believe who that is.”
Gannon squinted down the street. “Who?”
Dixon absorbed more from the scanner, then said, “It’s Gustav.”
“What?”
Dixon held up a finger, listening to his scanner.
“All this time—” Dixon smiled “—he’s been at the deli around the block. He heard the commotion, then started asking cops when he can get back into his apartment. Wait. He says Sylvester has no guns, hates guns, is going through tough times, is emotionally unstable and makes stuff up.”
“He makes stuff up?”
Gannon saw a uniformed cop enter Nada’s building with a large brown bag. “Now what?”
Ten minutes passed and nothing.
Gannon’s phone buzzed and he received a photo of himself at the cordon taken from the cordon at the opposite end of the street.
The message with it said Hey.
Gannon studied the press pack at the west cordon. A woman gave him a small wave. Katrina Kisko, a reporter with the New York Signal, the new online newspaper.
Seeing her gave him pause.
They’d met at a double homicide in the Bronx and started dating. It was good—better than good. He’d fallen hard for her, thought they had something strong. For the first time in his life, he was no longer alone. Until Katrina broke it off, telling him that being in the same business made things “too complicated” for her.
Too complicated?
He was stunned. He didn’t understand. It was like a kick in the teeth.
That was a few months ago and Gannon hadn’t seen her until now.
He returned her wave.
Then NYPD radios crackled. The cordon tape was lifted; Dixon and other news photographers rushed toward the building, recording Nada being escorted shirtless and cuffed into a waiting car.
It was over.
Twenty minutes later, the NYPD press officer told reporters that there was never a hostage or guns involved. Nada was going to Bellevue for a psych evaluation.
Reporters fired a barrage of questions. Gannon had to repeat his three times before the officer got to it.
“What about the Napoleon gun?” Gannon asked.
“A fabrication.”
More questions and Katrina Kisko weighed in.
“How did you get Nada to surrender?” she asked.
“He asked for food and we gave it to him.”
“What kind of food?” Katrina asked.
“A cheeseburger, fries and a milk shake.”
“What flavor was the shake?” Katrina asked.
“Cripes.” The press officer repeated her question into his radio.
The answer crackled back. “Strawberry.”
Katrina smiled and resumed typing on her BlackBerry.
At that point Gannon’s phone rang.
“This is Lisker.”
“It’s over. There’s no gun, no hostage, no story.”
“Yeah, we’ve got something else. One of our stringers just picked this up on his police scanners—four murders in an armored car hit at an I-87 truck stop.”
“Where?”
“Ramapo. We’re breaking it. We’ll work the phones here but I want you and Dixon to get up there now. You’re the lead. We have to own this story, Gannon.”