Jimmy Klurfeld raised his hand. “I am.”

“Right. Our guy is from somewhere around Detroit. See if the Detroit PD knows anything.” The noise level in the room started rising, but he raised his voice even louder to shut it down. “People. People, here’s the thing. Do. Not. Tell anyone what we got. Let me repeat that for the kiddies in the back row. We have a source who we’re going to protect. The suspect gets spooked and it’s our fault, by next week we’ll all be asking people if they want to supersize that.” He clapped twice and reminded us what we do. “All right, let’s do some journalism.”

In a different situation I would have called Eunie Kaufman’s office or Danny Ricciardi over at Justice to get an official denial I could quote—“A Justice Department spokesperson told me he would beat the shit out of me if I ran this story,” or something like that—to prove that I had tried to investigate further before going with a single-sourced story. But I had no time for that. This was a shape-shifting story. Even in these days of cyber-journalism, breaking a big story in DigiWorld made a difference. Besides, if the White House learned we had this information, it might well try to prevent us from posting it. National security, blah, blah, blah. And the reality was the enlarged eleven-person Supreme Court would probably back them up.

Less than an hour later, after a little editing by Frankie and a quick legal read, I attached the appropriate capital N logo to my story, took a deep and satisfied breath, and posted it. “The Pro has learned exclusively that a suspect has been identified in the attack on the Lincoln Tunnel.” Then I clanged my cowbell. The cowbell was another Howie innovation; to create a team spirit each of us had our own device to ring or bang or shake when we posted an important story. (It also allowed Howie, on those occasions when he was pushing us to dig deeper, to shout out his favorite SNL line, “More cowbell!”) I got the usual response—several way-to-go’s, a couple of hurrahs, and a few lonely claps. Then back to work.

Few things are more exhilarating than a newsroom working at warp speed. There’s a physical high you want to grab on to and ride wherever it takes you. Piece by disparate piece, reaching out to sources throughout government and law enforcement, adding reports from other outlets, we began knitting together a scenario. There definitely was serious stirring. The mood inside the White House was described as “borderline euphoric.” We learned from a Defense Department source that a combined federal force, consisting of Homeland Security and regular army troops, had been sent to Detroit. A stringer from WWJ, 950 AM on your radio dial, told Klurfeld that the Detroit PD had been ordered to establish a six-block perimeter around a low-income area known to be a center of the drug trade; that area had been quarantined, meaning no one—including police officers, but especially media—was allowed inside that perimeter. The FAA issued a notice temporarily prohibiting helicopters, drones, and probably paper airplanes from being flown in or around that designated area. No pictures, please. Howie had two people researching the suspect, but they came up with nothing more than we had.