Those Who Trespass: A Novel of Television and Murder Read online

Shannon saw one man take a bullet squarely in the right eye. He was killed instantly. The mob panicked. Ten thousand tightly packed demonstrators were now desperately trying to get away from the gunfire any way they could.

  Shannon and his crew held their ground, continuing to tape the scene from a side street. Francisco and Juan stood in the middle of the road, getting shots of the fleeing mob. As hundreds of Argentine citizens fell, the stampede intensified and hundreds of helpless people were trampled on the cobblestone road. One prone woman, who tried to get up, was knocked back down in a heap. She curled into a fetal position and vanished under a sea of legs.

  Shannon was standing in a doorway scribbling notes when a pack of fleeing young men smashed into Francisco and Juan, knocking both men down. The camera bounced into the street, where it was kicked away and lost. Shannon, fighting his way through the panicked mob, ran to help his fallen colleagues. Francisco, the cameraman, was dazed from a kick in the head, and blood ran from his ear. Juan, the soundman, was shaken but okay. He had managed to right himself and to hang onto the tape deck and videotapes.

  “Juan, get those tapes to the car. I’ll take care of Francisco. Tell Carlos not to move till I get there.”

  “But what about the camera?”

  “Fuck the camera, it’s gone. Get moving,” Shannon ordered.

  “But that camera cost twenty-five thousand dollars. New York’s gonna be pissed,” the soundman screamed.

  “Get the fuck out of here, Juan,” Shannon screamed back, his voice hard, his look murderous. He then helped Francisco to his feet, all the while continuing to stare at Juan. The soundman finally got the message and moved out.

  Francisco was in bad shape but could move his legs. Shannon half carried him off the street and over to a courtyard, away from the fleeing mob. Scores of people were still running by. Gunfire and screams filled the air. Michaels gently put the cameraman down and leaned him against a stone wall. For the first time, Shannon noticed how bad the bleeding really was. He knew he had to get Francisco to a doctor soon.

  But movement of any kind would not be easy. The army had emerged from behind the palace gates and plunked itself down in the Plaza de Mayo. The crowd was in complete disarray. Scores of dead and wounded lay on the cold concrete. Soldiers were bending over, checking the casualties. Some of the troops were actually laughing. Shannon couldn’t believe it.

  Just as he began escorting Francisco to the GNN car, Shannon heard a sharp, metallic, clanking sound. He looked back and saw a canister of gas rolling in the street about twenty feet away. The mob was already completely routed, Shannon thought, so why were these idiots firing gas canisters? Shannon looked toward the Plaza and saw soldiers donning masks. Then came the familiar hissing sound. Shannon, gassed once while doing a story on Delta Force training, knew he had about thirty seconds to get away before the burn in his eyes would make it impossible to see.

  He boosted Francisco up and the two lurched down the street toward the prearranged meeting place with Carlos, the driver. After walking about two hundred yards, Shannon suddenly heard a command in Spanish: “Halt.”

  Turning toward the commanding voice, Shannon saw an M-16 pointed directly at his head. The young soldier sighting him stood about ten yards away.

  ¡Periodista! ¡Por favor, no dispare! Shannon used the phrase that every Latin American correspondent was required to know: “Journalist. Please, don’t shoot.”

  Shannon was frightened but looked directly into the soldier’s face. He had the high cheekbones and dark brown eyes of an Indian. Probably a poor kid from the countryside, Shannon thought.

  The soldier stared back at him, then looked at Francisco. It was obvious to anyone that the Gringo was helping this man, this Latin man. The young soldier, his gun still raised, began to gently rock back and forth. Shannon didn’t move. The guy is thinking things over, he surmised.

  Shannon continued to watch the soldier. He tried desperately to remain perfectly still but felt his legs shaking. Show no fear, Shannon thought. Show no fear. Finally, after what seemed like hours, but was really about twenty seconds, the soldier lowered his automatic weapon, and briskly walked past the correspondent and cameraman without even a glance.

  Shannon Michaels felt a surge of relief, but also a strange sense of anger and humiliation. He had been powerless in front of that soldier—no longer in control of his own life. He even thought he might cry—something he never did—and maintained his composure only when he heard a deep moan from Francisco.

  It took Shannon ten minutes more to get Francisco back to the car. Juan had made it back with the videotapes, and Carlos was already behind the wheel. Shannon quickly assessed the situation: it was five minutes before seven and the bureau was a ten-minute drive away. Shannon had been told that there was a doctor at the hotel, so Francisco could be treated right there—no need to divert to the hospital. Argentine time was one hour ahead of New York time, giving them a good shot at transmitting their videotape to New York just when the evening newscast was opening. For the first time all day, Shannon felt a bit of optimism.

  As Shannon was about to get into the car, he heard a voice: “Excuse me, sir. I am a courier for GNN and Mr. Solo wants me to take your tapes back to the bureau.” The man spoke perfect unaccented English.

  “That’s okay,” Shannon said, “we’re going to the bureau. I’ll run the tapes back.”

  The man smiled. He was small and well dressed in a dark suit and white starched shirt. “But Mr. Solo sent me, and if I don’t bring back the tapes I will be fired.”

  “I’ll cover for you,” said Shannon, who now noticed a change in the man’s facial expression. His smile went from good-natured to cruel with astonishing speed.

  As the man reached into his suit jacket, Shannon’s right fist swung forward, smashing into his jaw. It was pure instinct, pure adrenaline from the violence Shannon had just experienced. The man dropped to the ground, a handgun falling from his jacket. Secret police. Shannon wanted to kick the man as he lay there. He wanted to hurt him badly. He had been warned in Uruguay that Argentine security people tapped all hotel phones and watched the foreign press very closely. But Shannon controlled himself and resisted further violence.

  As he jumped into the GNN van, Shannon yelled, ¡Carlos, vamonos! ¡Apurate! “Carlos, let’s go! Hurry!” The driver sped down the Avenida San Martin, ignoring stop lights and dodging dazed pedestrians. The van made it to the hotel in eight minutes. Hotel personnel helped Francisco into the lobby while Shannon took the videotapes and raced toward the elevator. The feed point was on the top floor of the Sheraton and Shannon burst into the transmission ten minutes before Lyle Fleming was to go on the air.

  “Tell New York I’ve got four tapes of riot footage,” Shannon breathlessly told a startled technician. “Incredible stuff. No time to edit. Lyle will have to voice-over the raw footage.”

  “He doesn’t like to do that,” the tech said.

  “Any other suggestions?” Shannon asked sarcastically. “We’ve got a good chance of beating the competition if Lyle can voice-over the action as the video comes in.”

  Shannon Michaels was right. GNN led the broadcast with vivid scenes of the violence in Buenos Aires. Lyle Fleming explained to the audience that the dramatic videotape had just been shot, and the anchorman heightened the drama by telling GNN viewers that they were seeing the first pictures of the chaotic Argentine situation. As the video images rolled by on the TV screen, in all of their brutality, Fleming ad-libbed facts about the Falklands War and the Argentine surrender. With the help of some Associated Press wire copy placed in front of him, Fleming pulled off a compelling piece of broadcast journalism for which he would subsequently take an enormous amount of credit. None of the other networks had any video from Buenos Aires until twenty minutes later. It was a stunning victory for GNN.

  Shannon Michaels, riding the elevator from the feed point down to the GNN Bureau on the fifteenth floor, was elated. He knew his work had given GNN a huge victory.
Now he would finally get the recognition he deserved.

  GNN producers, correspondents, and technicians, hyper from a mutual adrenaline rush, gathered around telephones listening to The News Tonight broadcast live from New York. Everybody knew GNN had been first with the story. As Shannon Michaels entered the large suite, he expected his colleagues to greet him warmly. Instead, they completely ignored him. He couldn’t believe it.

  Sitting down at an empty desk, he turned his body outward toward those sitting nearby. Still no reaction. As he looked around the room, it became clear to him that something was up. And that something walked into the room about five seconds later.

  “I need your tapes and notes, Michaels.” The harsh voice belonged to Ron Costello, a man Shannon still had not met despite the previous bigfooting incident.

  “Why? And nice to meet you, too, Ron,” Shannon answered as he stood up. He had been back in the hotel for less than an hour, and his emotions were still raw from what he had experienced. He was in no mood to be treated disrespectfully.

  “Why I need them is not your concern, Michaels. Just hand over the tapes and notebook.”

  Shannon Michaels was not ready for this confrontation. He was instantly annoyed at the unpleasant man now standing before him. Then, his annoyance quickly turned to intense anger. Nobody was going to take his story away from him this time. As the fleshy face of Ron Costello glared at him, Shannon broke eye contact and looked over at the group of GNN people who stood silently watching. He sensed the group was hoping something would happen. Then he turned back and softly said: “Fuck you, Costello.”

  “What? What did you say to me?” Costello’s face dissolved into a grotesque mask of hate. He moved closer to Shannon, who could now smell his alcohol-tainted breath.

  “Use your own notes,” Shannon said, looking down into the man’s pinched face, “and you can have the tapes after I screen them. Now get away from me.”

  “Is there a problem?” A secretary had alerted Robert Solo to the developing confrontation, and the bureau chief now walked quickly into the room from the adjacent suite which housed his office.

  “Yeah, we got a big problem, Bob,” said Costello, still staring up at Shannon. “This hot shot won’t cooperate. I’ve got a piece to do on the riots for the special tonight, and he won’t give me the tapes.”

  Shannon was stunned. What special? What’s going on? he wondered to himself.

  “Michaels, GNN is doing a half-hour special to compete with Nightline about the situation here. Ron will be anchoring from B.A., Lyle Fleming will be in New York. So we need your notes and tapes to get Ron up to speed.”

  Shannon Michaels looked around. The crowd of GNN employees in the room had grown substantially. Like rubber-neckers at a bad accident, they were looking for blood. Shannon realized that he had no allies in the room, but it didn’t stop him from exacerbating the situation.

  “Well, if Ron had covered the story like he should have, he wouldn’t need my tapes and notes, would he, Bob?” Shannon then took a step toward Costello. “Where were you anyway, Ron?”

  “That’s none of your fucking business . . .”

  “Hold it, Ron.” Robert Solo’s authoritative tone silenced the snarling correspondent. Solo then turned slowly in Shannon’s direction and calmly stated: “Listen, Michaels, we needed Ron here to handle the diplomatic end of the story. We were trying to get an interview with Galtieri and we couldn’t have our top guy running around on the street if and when it came through.”

  Costello smirked at Michaels. Shannon’s throat was suddenly dry. He swallowed and said: “Then let Ron do the diplomatic angle tonight and let me do the riot piece. I was there when it all went down, Bob. I was in the best position to report the story. I am the GNN correspondent who actually covered this thing, who almost got killed doing so. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

  “It means you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing, Michaels,” said Ron Costello, his right index finger jabbing into Shannon’s chest. The younger correspondent’s left hand shot out and locked onto Costello’s wrist. With his right hand, he bent Costello’s hand sharply downward. The older man gave a cry of pain.

  “You’re fucking crazy,” Costello screamed. “You’re through in this company. I’ll see that you never work again. Do you hear me, you fucking incompetent jackass?”

  Shannon Michaels released Costello’s hand and shoved him backwards, the whole day’s emotions fueling his thrust. With a stunned look on his face, Ron Costello crashed into the wall, and slumped to the floor, his face drained of all color. No one said a word. Robert Solo looked at Shannon Michaels and shook his head. It was all over for Shannon. Everybody knew it. Shannon glared at the fallen Costello and walked quickly out of the room. He did not appear on the GNN special that night from Argentina. In fact, Shannon Michaels never appeared on any GNN broadcast again.

  * * *

  3

  MARTHA’S VINEYARD

  SEPTEMBER 1994

  His breathing labored, his mind trying to sort out his feelings, the assassin now stepped away from Ron Costello’s corpse. He felt strangely detached from the grisly scene around him. Ron Costello’s lifeless body looked to him like a painting to be curiously evaluated. He felt no remorse. He knew he was at war. People had hurt him badly, and one of them had just paid the price.

  Still staring at Costello, whose eyes were opened wide, the killer listened for any sound. He heard none. He slowly walked around Costello’s bloody body, looking for any potential clues he might have left behind. Finding nothing, he opened the door and put the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the outer handle. He then removed his surgeon’s gloves and put them in his jacket pocket. It would be many hours before anyone missed Ron Costello. By that time, the assassin, having carried out his well-developed getaway plan, would be off the island.

  Leaving the hotel quickly but inconspicuously, the assassin pulled his collar up, walked with his head down toward the Edgartown dock area, and caught a cab back to his small hotel in Vineyard Haven, which was about a fifteen-minute drive from Edgartown. It was approaching midnight and the bars were still hopping, music and laughter filling the air. As he walked, the killer heard one bar band playing an old song by the group Asia:

  It was the heat of the moment,

  telling me what my heart felt.

  The heat of the moment, shone in your eyes.

  The song had been popular in 1982. Ironically, it had been a big hit then in Argentina.

  As he expected, a line of cabs flanked the docks. The killer approached one cab and, as he slipped into its back seat, he saw someone staring at him from the porch of the Barnacle Bar above him and to the right. A feeling of danger enveloped the assassin, but there was nothing he could do but look quickly away. The cabbie drove off.

  A slightly tipsy woman watched as the taxi headed out of Edgartown. She knew that man’s face, but what was his name? She shrugged, dismissing the question as unimportant, and headed back inside for another Sam Adams.

  * * *

  4

  MANHATTAN

  SEPTEMBER 1994

  On the night Ron Costello was murdered, Detective First Class Tommy O’Malley was hard at work. The big policeman sat in a city-owned 1990 Buick LeSabre parked outside a dilapidated tenement building on 124th Street, just off Third Avenue. He and his partner, Jackson Davis, were hunting a career criminal named Edgar Melton, known on the street as “Robo.” Associates had pinned the nickname on him because he did everything, including murder, like a robot—without emotion.

  Both Tommy O’Malley and Jackson Davis hated this kind of stakeout. Robo was a true psycho—so extremely unpredictable that he’d have to be handled with maximum force and maximum caution. Civilians have no idea what the police have to face these days, Tommy thought. An onslaught of babies born addicted to drugs, or severely abused as children, were now young adults, and many had absolutely no respect for life. They were true sociopaths. The Rodney King incident had put the police
on the defensive, but there was a new saying going around the precinct houses: “Better to be tried by twelve than carried out by six.” Cops knew that violence on the streets of America had never been more brutal, nor more unfathomable.

  Trying to run down and apprehend dope dealers like “Robo” Melton was dangerous, time consuming, and a major pain in the ass, mostly because of their network of safe houses. As soon as a cop appeared on the street, some kid would sound the alarm and criminals like Robo Melton would disappear into the bowels of urban decay. Chasing punks over rooftops and through cruddy basements was not something Tommy O’Malley relished. That’s why he had Jackson, who was quick and fearless.

  Tommy and Jackson had been partners, or “married” in police parlance, for ten years. Both were members of the NYPD’s elite Specialized Homicide Detective Squad, and their territory was Manhattan North, from 59th Street to the Bronx. It was a huge beat that comprised some of the most crime-infested neighborhoods in the United States. O’Malley and Davis investigated scores of murders each year, clearing or solving about seventy-five percent of them—an efficiency rate ten percent above the department average.

  As a cop, Tommy O’Malley knew he had at least one thing going for him. Though forty years old, he remained the favorite in just about any street fight he was forced to participate in. A long time ago, at Boston University, he had played halfback on the varsity football team, and his physical strength was still feared on the streets. With his reddish-brown hair, lopsided grin, and slight paunch, Tommy looked like a guy who would buy you a drink and solve your problems. Which was often true. But O’Malley was, by nature, an intense man, sometimes quick to anger. And he hated the fact that brazen young criminals controlled some of the city’s poorest, most vulnerable neighborhoods.

  These thugs killed with a casualness that O’Malley could not comprehend. They lived their lives deep in the recesses of evil: selling drugs to kids, prostituting their own sisters, gunning down trusted friends for money. He had seen all that and more. And he had also seen a criminal justice system that did not want to deal with the brutal reality of what was happening. On the ghetto streets where Tommy O’Malley spent a large part of his days and nights, the lives of American citizens were cheap, and America didn’t seem to care. But Tommy and Jackson Davis did care, dealing with the situation in their own sometimes brutally efficient way.