The Beretta flew through the suburban streets like a fighter jet with a MiG on its tail. Flip unlatched his seat-belt and reached down to pick up the tape off the floor mat.
Batman viewed the boy as he bent over awkwardly to pick up the cassette. Then he slammed the brake, almost smashing his foot through the pedal. The screeching of the tires drowned out the snapping sound of Flip’s neck breaking against the dashboard.
With no time to waste, Batman sped the car again—he was now in a trance-like state. He had already gone from zero to fifty when he turned onto McPherron. The cul-de-sac fast approached—the enemy was in sight.
He immediately spotted his target. Tim Kent had a long, chiseled face and his hair was gelled vertically with stylish sideburns. He stood beside his attractive girlfriend, leaning on a canary-colored Volkswagen Rabbit convertible. They were intently locking lips, but the screech of tires caught his attention.
To his left stood a group of four college-age students who were guzzling beer from plastic cups. One of them yelled out with laughter, “Sounds like Flip’s wasted again!”
The group was the first target. He came at them with such a high speed that their inebriated reflexes didn’t have a chance to react. Bodies flew, and screams filled the misty air. Batman knew he wouldn’t have to go back to finish the job—the group was clustered, which wasn’t a smart military tactic. They didn’t know they were at war.
Without a moment to spare, he locked on his target at twelve o’clock, and launched his car directly at Tim Kent.
Batman savored the brief moment—he’d anticipated it for almost two years. It was the one thing that allowed him to continue on with life. Although, he wished he could have found another way. A way in which he could have made Tim Kent beg for forgiveness as he slowly sucked each last breath from him. But that would have been a logistical nightmare.
The girlfriend screamed in horror—she would be collateral damage—but Kent remained frozen. The trembling fear in his face would have to be satisfaction enough. Batman was convinced he understood why he was about to die.
The impact shook Batman, leaving him momentarily disoriented. But he quickly found his “fighter pilot cool.” He carefully moved Flip’s lifeless body into the driver’s seat and surrounded him with his empty beer cans.
“I told you drinking and driving kills,” he mocked the dead boy. He then scurried into the rain-drenched pine forest that surrounded the cul-de-sac. He thought this would bring closure, but he would find that he was wrong.
Chapter 3
Midtown Manhattan
July 2—present
When you’ve risked your life in the world’s most dangerous places, a long life expectancy isn’t so expected. So it wasn’t a surprise that I was having a midlife crisis in just my late thirties. The only question was why it took so long.
I sat at a small table on the patio of a trendy midtown restaurant called Norvell’s, alone, but not by myself. The relentless machine of Manhattan traffic whisked behind me, filling the summer day with the majestic sounds of honking horns, which someone once described to me as urban bird chirping. The day was a spring-like seventy-two degrees with only a few clouds in the aqua sky, making it hard to imagine that thunderstorms were predicted for later this afternoon.
Across from me sat Lauren Bowden—her glowing blonde hair surrounding her angelic face. She claimed to be eleven years my junior, although my trusty reporter skills told me that her given age wasn’t the same one that was on her birth certificate.
Lauren has been what I’d loosely refer to as my girlfriend for the past year. She’s also my co-worker at GNZ (Global Newz), an international cable news network, and as long as I’m playing loose with terms, news might be a stretch when describing my industry as of late. It’s been taken over by loud, noise-driven sensationalism that my boss, Cliff Sutcliffe, glowingly refers to as newsertainment. The running joke is that GNZ used to spell news with a Z since they were a unique alternative to traditional news, but now it’s because much of their on-air talent can’t spell. But that wouldn’t be my concern for much longer.
I accidentally spent a few seconds away from showering Lauren with attention, which she not-so-subtly let me know by slamming shut her menu. She then addressed me in her southern accented voice, “John Peter, Norvell’s is world famous for its fabulous sushi. It’s the only real choice. So for the life of me, I can’t figure out why you’ve been staring so intently at that menu.”
I had hoped to buy a few more minutes hiding behind the menu. Usually she was too focused on herself to notice my avoidance techniques. Out of options, I was forced to endure a few uncomfortable moments of mundane conversation. But since I didn’t get a word in, I’m not sure the term ‘conversation’ would be accurate.
Thankfully, our waitress arrived just in time to stop the migraine that had begun to percolate behind my right eye. As usual, Lauren waited for me to order for her. But I was drawing a blank.
“What did you say you wanted again?”
“Weren’t you listening, John Peter? I said to order two sushis and two glasses of their best cab.”
Cab is what I needed, as in the yellow kind with four wheels to flee the scene. I held a long look on Lauren, before switching my glance to our waitress, who wore a no-frills uniform and a pleasant smile. A complete contrast. Her name was Bridget, which I knew because she had been our regular waitress since Lauren decided that Norvell’s was going to be
our
restaurant … at least until another eatery became the trendy place to be seen.
“She’ll have two orders of sushi—the hosomaki—and two glasses of your best Cabernet. I’ll take a cheeseburger and a bottle of your cheapest beer.”
Bridget fought back a grin, gathered herself, and asked me which type of cheese I desired on my burger. I made a not very funny joke about holding the cheese on the cheeseburger, which received a giggle. I settled on American cheese. I’d been to so many countries the last twenty years that American seemed exotic.
Lauren flashed me a dirty look for going against her wishes. Or perhaps for evoking the flirtatious giggle from the waitress. The
why
really didn’t matter at this point. She then sent an obvious fake smile in Bridget’s direction. She’d mastered both looks.
Who says there aren’t usable life skills gained from beauty pageants?
Certainly not the former Miss Beaufort County South Carolina who sat across from me.
I ignored Lauren, seeking the refuge of a daydream. But I was jolted back to reality by an angry twang firing at me from pointblank range. “Are you listening to me, John Peter?”
I’ve always been confused as to why she calls me John Peter, since that’s not what JP stands for. “I’m sorry, you were talking about um … well … you know the…”
She flashed me her most displeased look. “I was talking about our trip to visit my parents in Hilton Head this weekend. It’s the Fourth of July, if you haven’t forgotten.”
I racked my brain to think if it were actually possible that I’d agreed to this. I had interviewed rogue dictators and heartless terror-mongers over the years, but I still wasn’t sure I was prepared to meet the people who created Lauren Bowden.
“I did?”
She sighed theatrically. “Yes, first we will stop in North Carolina for my big interview with Lamar Thompson, and then to Mommy and Daddy’s place. They insisted we stay with them.”
It was best not to argue. She would just claim that my forgetfulness was due to jealousy, since she was able to beat me out for the Thompson interview. The truth was, I would have refused it, due to its tabloid nature. In the world according to Lauren, this would be another example of why I’d become a dinosaur in this business, and my career was “in a dreadful decline.” Little did she know that this dinosaur was about to become happily extinct.
The interviewee in question, Lamar Thompson, first entered the limelight twenty years ago when he was a high school basketball star out of Columbia, South Carolina. At the time, he was the most celebrated and highly recruited prep basketball player in history. Lamar chose the University of North Carolina, but he never got to play a game.
On an October night of his freshman year at UNC, two weeks prior to the start of basketball season, it all ended for him. In the spirit of being young and stupid, Thompson and a couple of fellow classmates decided to spend their Friday night pulling a prank. They hid in the wooded area alongside a dark, country road in a small town outside of Chapel Hill. When an unsuspecting car drove by, they tossed a lifelike dummy onto its hood, giving the driver the impression of having struck a real person. It was followed by beer-buzzed laughs of insensitive youth and an exhilarating dash for safety.
It eventually led to a high-speed chase with police, which ended with Thompson’s car slamming into an oncoming vehicle driven by Marilyn Lacey. The mother of three was killed instantly.
There were two other people in Thompson’s car—fellow UNC classmate Brad Lynch, who died from injuries sustained in the crash, and another passenger who survived, but was never identified due to the fact he or she was a juvenile. But when word got out, it really didn’t matter who else was involved, because the only name people were talking about was Lamar Thompson … the next great thing.
Lamar’s leg was mangled in the accident, ending his promising basketball career. That was the good news for him. The bigger problem was that he was legally drunk, and despite his claims to the contrary, he was identified as the driver. He served five years in the state pen for vehicular manslaughter. The years following were no kinder to him—he was now an unemployed night watchman with a history of substance abuse.
But the reason Lamar Thompson was once again relevant, was his recent assertion that there was a fourth man in the car that night named Craig Kingsbury, and that he was the one who was drunk behind the wheel. The reason this was front-page news, and screwing up my holiday weekend, was that Craig was now Senator Kingsbury, who had just tossed his name into the ring to become the next President of the United States, and many believe the frontrunner.
Lauren grew annoyed with my distracted pause. “John Peter, where
are
you
today?”
The question was not where I was, but rather, how the hell did I get here? My old high school journalism teacher, Murray Brown, always preached that journalism went beyond the traditional who, what, where, why, and how. A great journalist tells a story, and to write the ending, one must return to the beginning. And whenever I return to the beginning of my story it always takes me back to Gwen.
Chapter 4
I first met Gwen Delaney when her family moved two houses down the street from ours in the town of Rockfield, Connecticut. We were five years old. From that point on we were inseparable. We went from childhood friends to teenage romance, and then off to Columbia University with plans of one day owning a small-town newspaper and having lots of babies. That was before Saddam Hussein changed everything.
During my freshman year at Columbia, I took an internship at a start-up cable news network called GNZ. The idea of twenty-four hour news was gimmicky at the time, compared to the traditional print journalism that I aspired to. But being the über-achiever that I was, I thought television experience would be a good résumé builder. Little did I know that it would be a career launcher.
Since GNZ was in its infancy, it didn’t have the budget of its competitors like CNN. So when war broke out, they offered their one and only intern, JP Warner, the opportunity of assisting their lead international correspondent, Jonathan Horvitz, during the war coverage. This was a dream opportunity for a kid who grew up idolizing war correspondents like Ed Bradley and David Halberstam, and I was all in—I could make up the school work, this was the opportunity of a lifetime, even if my horrified parents didn’t see it that way.
As history would have it, Horvitz didn’t have the stomach for battle, and ended up hiding under the bed of our Baghdad hotel room, praying to whatever deity would listen. So, three years removed from being able to legally buy a drink, I spent six weeks providing on-camera reports from the front-line.
The Gulf War wasn’t much of a fight, as far as military conflicts go, but what it will always be remembered for was that it was the first “TV War.” It changed the war correspondent from a brave, noble observer into a television star. Lines were blurred, and some would say it was the beginning of reality TV. Although, nobody is quick to take credit for reality TV.
When I returned home, I learned that I’d become as much of a story as the war itself. I can still recite my first glorious review in the
New York Globe
:
Nobody came out of Desert Storm a bigger star than the youthful JP Warner. With rugged good looks, he appears more like a leading man the likes of Newman or Redford, than the typical news reporter in the image of Cronkite or Rather. He comes across as courageous, confident, honest, and outspoken. Some will question his credentials or experience, but nobody can deny he is a star in the making.
I was hooked. During my remaining years at Columbia I worked every free moment I had at GNZ, and then signed on to become an international correspondent the day after I graduated. I wanted Gwen to come with me, but she refused, remaining in New York to report for the
New York Globe
, and spending most of her time writing obituaries. Little did I know that I was writing an obituary for our relationship, as we drifted further and further apart. At one point I actually began to believe our relationship was holding me back. Although, in hindsight, I’m a little fuzzy as to what exactly I was being held back from. Not even when Gwen decided that we need “some time apart,” which soon changed to “a lot of time apart,” did I ever think that we wouldn’t be together one day.