“A woman was on the floor beside him when he tried to get his gun. But the suspects saw him. They checked his ID, discovered he was an FBI agent, then shot him point-blank in the head.”
“They made an example of him?”
“They knowingly and purposely killed a federal agent. That’s an AFO—assault on a federal officer—which makes this a federal case.”
“And there’s an eyewitness? A female eyewitness?”
“That’s right. She’s crucial.”
“Who is she? Is she an agent? Where is she?”
“I don’t know. The bureau’s keeping that tight.”
“And the suspects? What about them and the take?”
“As you know, there were four. They got away clean on motorcycles, high-performance sport bikes, with an estimated six million in cash.”
“They got away with six million on motorcycles? That’s a lot of cash.”
“Most of it was vacuum-packed-compact and easy to transport in saddlebags.”
“I read a piece you wrote a while back in the
“Well, no doubt it was highly organized. It’s too early to rule anything in or out. But this was a ruthless, chillingly cold hit.”
“That’s my lead quote from an industry insider.”
“Just keep my name out of it.”
Gannon checked the time, thanked Bennett and ended the call.
After he finished writing the story, he sent it to the desk and browsed the web again, monitoring the competition. So far, nobody had what the WPA had—the inside angle about an FBI agent executed while going for his gun in a six-million-dollar heist that left four people dead.
“Nice work, Jack,” Hal Ford said after proofing Gannon’s story and putting it out to some five thousand news outlets across the country and around the world that subscribed to the WPA wire.
Gannon went to the washroom and splashed water on his face. He was the lead on the heist murders until Lisker pulled him off. That meant he’d have to set aside anything else he was working on. He stared at himself in the mirror, kneading the tension in his neck.
It was near dusk when he collected his things in his bag and headed home for the day. Sirens echoed through the city as he walked east, concern gnawing in the pit of his stomach.
The Wyoming Diner was a classic eatery wrapped in battered chrome and blue trim. It was two blocks east of Madison Square Garden.
Gannon stopped off there to wait out the rush at Penn Station. A gum-snapping waitress—“What’ll it be, hon?”—took his order: a club sandwich and large white milk.
While waiting, he used his BlackBerry to check his competition, trolling for anything breaking on the heist. Not much, so far. Good. His food arrived. So did an email from Lisker, in his typical jabbing style:
Strong pick-up on our exclusive. We’re leading. Need new angle tomorrow.
Gannon chewed on his situation but failed to hit on a new angle. It’d been a long day and he was wiped out. After eating, he paid the bill, then went to a used-book store near Penn to think. It always stirred his imagination and his intent to write a crime novel one day, but the idea dissipated when his BlackBerry vibrated with an alert.
Reuters had just moved a story confirming 6.3 million dollars was taken in the heist and that American Centurion would offer a substantial reward for information leading to the arrest of the killers.
But the pressure to stay ahead was mounting. He had to find a new angle. For now, he needed to get home, to shower, get some sleep and come at it fresh in the morning.
The crush at Penn Station had barely subsided when he threaded his way through the vast low-ceilinged warren under Madison Square Garden. He scored a seat on an uptown train. Most of the WPA’s married staff lived in New Jersey or Long Island, where real estate was affordable. He lived in the mid-100s and some days it could be a long ride.
For Gannon, New York was an adrenaline-driven power-drive through heaven and hell. Amid its majesty, there were the crowds, the traffic, the eternal sirens; and an array of smells like roasted nuts, grilled bratwurst, perfume, body odor, flowers and horse piss where the carriages lined up at Central Park between Sixth and Fifth Avenues.
He loved the way girls checked their hair in the reflection of subway windows; the way New Yorkers talked, like the time on Seventh Avenue he heard one woman tell another, “I’d rather gouge out my eyes with a curling iron than see that walking slime again.” Or, the time he stopped to check that a man facedown on the sidewalk on Thirty-second Street was alive.
He was. Still, Gannon alerted a cop.
Yeah, Manhattan was a world away from Buffalo.
As his train grated and swayed, subway platforms blew by him like the moments of his life. He’d grown up in a tough neighborhood of proud blue-collar families who lived in small, flag-on-the-porch homes built after the Second World War. People there were die-hards who believed the Bills would win the Super Bowl and the Sabres would win the Stanley Cup.
He had a sister, Cora, older by five years. Mom was a waitress. Dad worked in a factory that made rope and would come home with calloused hands. Gannon remembered how the winter winds would tumble off Lake Erie and rattle his windows as he fantasized about being a writer. Cora nurtured that dream, taking him to the library. “You have to read what I read in high school if you’re going to be a writer.” Cora got him Robert Louis Stevenson, Hemingway, Twain; urged their parents to buy him a secondhand computer and encouraged him to write.
Jack and Cora were close, but eventually she grew apart from them all. Then she started taking drugs. So many nights were filled with screaming, slamming doors, silence and tears. She was seventeen when she ran away with an older addict.
Heartbroken, Gannon’s mom and dad hired private detectives, flew to cities when they had tips. They never found her. It was futile and it broke his heart. He ached for her to come home. Then his anguish turned to anger for what she’d done.
Years went by. Cora was out of their lives.
His parents never saw her again. They never stopped searching for her.
After Cora left, he’d worked in Buffalo factories to put himself through college because his parents had spent nearly all they had looking for her.
All the while, he yearned to become a reporter and escape Buffalo for New York City and a job with a big news outlet. After college, he worked at small weeklies before landing a job with the
The
Then, while dispatched to a mall shooting in Ohio, he’d met a reporter with the
