Madman's Thirst Read Online Free Page B

around
the front seat and did a hasty cleanup. But he knew he would miss some. Nancy
would notice and pitch a fit. But nobody can go into a Dunkin’ for just coffee,
for Christ sake!
     Harvey was a triple dipper.
Having done 20 and out in the N.Y.P.D., he was nearing the end of a concurrent
25-year stint in the Army Reserve, with a cushy staff sergeant billet right on
Staten Island in Fort Wadsworth. An overachiever – working on a Masters in
Education at the College of Staten Island – Harvey was cognizant of the
blessings of multiple pensions and thus also covered the police beat for the Richmond
Register .
    The transition from cop to
reporter was jarring at first – he had been programmed to hate the media – but
now loved the job. He reported to an editor, Bob Pearsall, who had balls, and
his own background cut him plenty of slack with the local cops. They assumed,
rightly, that Harvey wasn’t out to screw them. As a result, he crossed more
crime scene tapes than any other reporter. A penchant for colorful checkered
sports coats made him easy to spot; most cops now knew him by sight. He was
patient with the rookies who gave him a hard time, politely asking them to
check with a superior. If that didn’t work, he put his 240 pounds in their face
and told them he was arresting kids their age when they spilled out of their
fathers’ condoms. 
    Harvey was already vested in the
paper’s pension plan and planned to call it quits soon. He felt bad about
leaving Pearsall in the lurch – the man knew a good crime story – but with
three pensions (the triple dip) and a teacher wife nearing retirement (another
dip at the entitlement trough), not to mention Social Security (a quintuple
dip?) warmer climes beckoned. In fact, he was reading a brochure about the new
Gary Player golf community in the Smoky Mountains when his police scanner
crackled. Then three squad cars, sirens blazing, shot past.
    Five minutes later, Harvey pulled
up to an obvious crime scene, bracketed with police cars, ambulances and
anxious neighbors. He felt sick. It had nothing to do with the sinkers he’d
downed. He knew the house.
    A grim-faced cop lifted the yellow
tape for him.
    “It sucks, Ev. Big time. I’m
sorry.”
    Harvey heard his name being
called. He looked up to the front door, where District Attorney Daniel O’Connor
was waving him up. Harvey bent under the tape and headed up the walk with a
growing sense of foreboding. What was the D.A. doing here? O’Connor was pale as
a ghost. This was bad.            
    ***
    Robert Pearsall was tired. The Richmond
Register was a “p.m.” paper. It hit the newsstands just before noon and was
on stoops or in doorways all across the borough by the time most people got
home from work in “the city,” as Staten Islanders universally referred to
Manhattan. That meant his day usually started before dawn.
    The newsroom was quiet, a sea of
empty cubicles. More than half the editorial staff had been let go over the
previous three years, as the Internet decimated the paper’s traditional
advertising base. Circulation, which had peaked at 70,000, was now around
40,000, and that didn’t tell the whole story. The 70,000 figure was reached when
the Island had a population of 200,000. Since most papers were then home
delivered, that meant that just about every Islander not in diapers read the Register .
Today the population was half a million, the majority new arrivals with no
affection for their “hometown newspaper.” There was talk of the Register going weekly. The paper’s new $25 million headquarters and state-of-the-art
printing plant, built with cheap money four years earlier, was already obsolete
and a financial drain. Pearsall often longed for the crowded and decrepit
newsroom he started in, with its steel-desk ambiance and bustle.
    Pearsall put his feet up. His
shoes were black, and clashed with the off-the-rack brown suit he was wearing.
At least, he noted, his socks matched his