Andrew Klavan - Empire of Lies

"There were women screaming, people diving under desks. It was terrifying," said one young doofus whose clueless face was captioned cable network office worker.

"According to Hondler," the newswoman said, "Piersall demanded that the network give him airtime to tell what he called 'his side of the story.'"

When Hondler tried to calm Piersall down, the former Augustus Kane waved the pistol around some more, then staggered out of the room. Hondler had his assistant call 911.

Outside the network, on Broadway, Piersall's silver BMW Z4 was illegally parked in a loading zone. He stumbled to it and plunked himself behind the wheel. One witness claimed she heard him say he was headed for the FBI field office in Federal Plaza. In any case, he ripped away southward jig-time. Ram the force field full speed. If those Borgons escape, the galaxy is done for.

It was late afternoon, but still before the evening rush. Traffic is always jammed up tight on that little island, but there was some movement to be found at this hour on the Great White Way. Piersall screeched away from the curb with the hot 3.0-liter, 255-horsepower engine tanked and cranked. Police said he managed to work the Z4 up to 50 miles per hour, oozing through the narrow gaps between the vans and taxis funneling into Times Square. The police were after him almost at once. The chase was on.

Nowadays it seems even the most minor celebrity can't go to the bathroom without video footage of the event getting beamed into our homes on TV or over the Internet, and yet, miraculous to relate, there was not one single frame of Patrick Piersall and his silver Z4 weaving and tacking through the pulsing core of Manhattan. It must've been a sight to see, too: the sports car jamming under the thirty-yard-high billboard of a woman in her bra and panties and screaming past the four-thousand-square-foot television screen showing some comedian or other laughing through his humongous white teeth. But the best our news crew could do was some stock footage of Times Square with its towering, spotlit nakedness and neon. We viewers had to desperately spur our atrophied imaginations in order to envision the rest.

Back to our story, though. Piersall never slowed. He raced through red lights and green alike, leaving a trail of chaotic intersections in his wake. Only the traffic congealing around Herald Square got the best of him. At one point, in fact, the traffic got so bad that a pair of pursuing officers actually got out of their cruisers and darted past the George M. Cohan statue shoulder to shoulder, trying to catch up to the Beamer on foot. At the last moment, though, the sea of yellow cabs in front of Macy's window parted, and Piersall and his Z4 darted out of reach of the law again.

But more and more cop cars were pouring into the pursuit with each passing moment. By the time our hero reached City Hall, he was hemmed in on every side. A wall of cruisers blocked his path south and east. The park stopped him to the west. And City Hall's concrete security bunkers sealed him off northward. Swerving to avoid a collision with any or all of them, Piersall ran the sports car up on the sidewalk as pedestrians hurled themselves over park benches to get out of the way. A moment later, the actor spilled out of the driver's door and started raving and waving his hands in the air, whereupon… well, let's cut to the videotape.

Which they did-again-concluding the story now with astatement from a "cable-network spokesman." The newswoman read the words as they appeared in white letters on one side of the screen.

"All of us at the network are deeply saddened by today's events. Patrick Piersall is a fine actor and an important part of television history. His presence at our network will be missed. We wish him the very best as he attempts to rehabilitate himself."

To this, the newswoman added, "The network says Piersall's series True Crime America was canceled due to low ratings and content some viewers found offensive. I'm Amy Lopez -City News."

With that-guess what-they played the video of Piersall's arrest again. Except this time, they had the audio turned up higher. They let it run on after the newswoman's sign-off so we could hear Piersall's drunken shouts more clearly, the curse words bleeped out:

"Let me through, you [bleeps]! You stinking [bleep]ing [bleeps]! Call the FBI! I demand to see the FBI! Listen to me! Let me the [bleep] through! It's an emergency! I'm a…[bleep]ing TV… personality! I have friends! I'm somebody. I've got to get to the FBI!"

But his words were nearly drowned out by the cops who were simultaneously screaming, "Where's the gun, [bleep]er? Give us the [bleeping] gun! Give us the [bleep]ing rod! Now! [Bleep]ing now!" and so on, until-seeing his empty hands waving in the air, I guess-one of them shouted, "[Bleep,] let's just [bleep]ing do it!" and they rushed him.

The report concluded with video of Piersall being frog-marched to a waiting cruiser. This was a portion of the arrest that hadn't been shown before, or perhaps had been shown before I tuned in.

The people who had scattered off the sidewalk at the sight of the oncoming BMW regrouped to gawk at this part of the show. Their faces ringed the scene as the cops led Piersall away, their features fixed in various expressions of amusement or fascination or apathy-just as if they were watching it as I was, at home, on their sofas, on TV.

And at the center of them was Piersall. The amateur cameraman had gotten in close to him now, very close. The cameraman's hands were obviously shaking in his excitement and the lens was sent wild a few times by the jostling crowd. All the same, what with his zoom and everything, he was taping so tightly that we could make out individual burst blood vessels in Piersall's nose and chart the course of the sweat along the furrows of his brow and cheeks.

The actor had that baffled, hectic look that seems to be a standard fashion accessory for Drunks Being Led Away by the Police. His eyes shifted back and forth, the only active part of his otherwise passive body. And he was talking, still talking, in a strange murmuring tone that seemed at once automatic and urgent, as if he had repeated his warning so many times it had grown meaningless to him, but he knew he had to repeat it yet again until someone listened to him. It was a tone I knew, a tone I remembered, a tone I'd heard for years from my crazy mother.

"You'll find out," he said breathlessly. "You'll find out. Whether you listen or not. Doesn't matter. Hope it's not too late. Too late. You wouldn't listen. Wouldn't listen to Casey Diggs. Wouldn't listen to me. But you'll see. Diggs was right. It's true. It's all true. All of it."

I sat up straight on the sofa, the remote control gripped tight in my hand. I leaned forward, staring at the screen, at the dazed, wild face of Patrick Piersall.

Now one cop put a hand on top of the actor's head and folded him into the backseat of the cruiser. For another moment, you could still hear Piersall muttering, "It's all true. It's all real. It's all happening."

Then the cruiser's door slammed shut. The story was over.

They arraigned Piersall the next morning at Manhattan Criminal Court. I was there.

It was a hell of a strange feeling. It was as if I'd stepped right into the giant TV screen: got up off the sofa, put my foot through the screen's liquefying glass and whirlpooled into the reality beyond like some character in a kids' sci-fi movie. I had parked my red Mustang in a lot on Chambers Street and walked to the courthouse. The route took me right past the spot where Piersall had been arrested the night before. I say "right past it" with a sort of awestruck emphasis because I'd been shown the damned video of the scene so many times that the location was blazoned on my imagination like some famous site-the Alamo, say, or the White House, some site where history had happened. The sparse grass of City Hall Park, the grimy white of the security bunkers, even the very gray of the street pavement seemed charged with last night's events, as if a roly-poly has-been of a second-rate TV actor being carted off to the drunk tank where he belonged were the stuff of song and story.