Free Shoot by Kieran Crowley

and… I forget the other one. We’re over this way. Third floor, Conference Room A, up two levels.”
    We took a two-person-wide escalator up through the towering foliage to the Manhattan Mezzanine and then a second one up to the Hudson Mezzanine.
    “So, you’re the reporter, I would like you to take shorthand while we talk with Chesterfield,” Amy informed me.
    “I would like that too, but I don’t know shorthand,” I told her, “but I have a good memory. I have a digital recorder, too, and can take notes on my laptop.”
    Amy scowled at me. Obviously, she had assumed all reporters took shorthand. I explained that I was only a pet columnist. She shrugged.
    “You didn’t hire me for my secretarial skills, I assume.”
    She smiled. “What was the deal with your Hardstein pictures in the paper today? A camera drone, right?”
    “Yeah,” I said, surprised.
    “Did you do it?”
    “No, a photographer. He’s available. Do you use camera drones?”
    She just smiled. Upstairs, we had to go through more metal detectors, and a shoe detector—even a “Sniffer” air booth to detect explosives.
    We arrived at a set of very large double doors with a bronze plate that identified it as the H UDSON R OOM . A team of plainclothes Executive Protection Service agents were outside. Hands vanished inside suit jackets. Amy identified us and we showed ID but we had to submit our bags for inspection again. My recorder and laptop were also checked out. They took our cellphones, turned them off, removed the batteries and said they would keep them until we were done. This kind of in-depth, hair-trigger security was presidential level. Interesting. How were we supposed to do better? Inside the cavernous, carpeted three-story room, floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows overlooked the Hudson River. A single, long, large wooden conference table was parallel to the big window, with eighteen cushioned black leather armchairs, most along the side and one at each end. The room was empty. We sat on the near side, close to the left end. I noticed there were lots of boats in the river between Manhattan and New Jersey. An NYPD launch, a Coast Guard cutter, and a giant US Navy destroyer, the USS
John McCain
, equipped with automated five-inch gun turrets, missile launch bays and Phalanx high-speed anti-aircraft, anti-missile Gatling guns. Without doubt the vessel also carried nuclear-tipped Tomahawk and Harpoon missiles.
    These people were very serious about security.

16
    “Let me do the talking,” Amy told me.
    “Sure, boss,” I said, placing my backpack on the table.
    A flying wedge of new security suits burst into the room. Behind them, in an ash-gray suit, white shirt and red power tie, followed the candidate, Speaker of the House Percy Chesterfield; bronzed, bored, and sucking on an unfiltered cigarette. The GOP politician reached for Amy’s much smaller hand and pumped it, as she introduced herself and me. The guy who shut down the US government over health insurance and almost sparked a worldwide financial crash to improve our economy—and was threatening to do it again—did not reach for my hand. We sat. Chesterfield fired up a new smoke, the brown tobacco and red glow of flame combined in a burnt-umber orange color that matched his skin. Either this guy used spray tan or he was some kind of new mutant. An agent set down a large cut-glass ashtray within reach. Amy started to talk but Chesterfield cut her off and looked at me.
    “Hold it. I served in Congress with Senator Richard Hardstein for many years. Are you the same guy in the
Daily Press
today—the reporter who caught poor Dickie Hardstein with his pants down?” he asked in a deep, raspy smoker’s voice.
    Uh-oh. It looked like my tabloid work might be a problem.
    “Yes, sir.”
    “That was tragic. Terrible. Where is it?” Chesterfield bellowed to his guards. “The paper I was reading?”
    It appeared magically in his hand. He held up the front page. HARD-OFF!
    “There