"Any trouble planting the evidence, Mr. Kreese?" "Should turn up in his office within 36 hours." "I don't think this one's going to work." "The guy's clean." "Now." "Our friend the state's attorney is clean now, but he did a stint in juvenile detention, another in drug rehab." "All we have to do is add a whiff of scandal and let the media follow the trail all the way back to those old sins." "But who cares?" "The public loves him." "The public has been lied to, Mr. Kreese." "Told all their lives they can have the good life, but no one ever gets it." "Every year, they work a little longer, and their house is worth a little less, their retirement fund gets a little smaller." "And when the people get upset, they start looking for someone to blame, someone they can take down." "The public has to love him, otherwise, none of this works." "Only our heroes fall, Mr. Kreese." "The rich and powerful take what they want." "We steal it back for you." "Sometimes, bad guys make the best good guys." "We provide..." "leverage." "So, this 13-year-old future State's Attorney steals a concession worker's uniform, we go from food stand to food stand telling them that we've run out of franks in the right-field bleachers -- It works." "And they never caught on?" "No." "Only after we had scammed more free food than we'd eat in a season." "I remember they asked us for our ticket stubs." "Which, by the way, we didn't have because we hopped the turnstiles." "Then...they asked to speak to our fathers." "And Nate says -- I'll never forget this -- he says, "Who do you think taught us to hop the stiles in the first place?"" "I've never tried to hide how bad things got for me when I was a kid." "But I put the drugs behind me, walked a straight line ever since -- swear on my mother." "Okay." "So..." "So, this guy, Reed Rockwell " "Professional career assassin." "He represents your opponent in the next election." "He sends you these photographs along with a note." "Then the next day, an aide finds a bottle of Vicodin in your office." "It wasn't mine." "Okay." "I broke an ankle playing ball with my kids a few years back." "I wouldn't even take the painkillers the doctor prescribed." "But now all this character Rockwell has to do is file a lawsuit against you -- anything -- a fender-bender..." "And then the aide has to come forward about the Vicodin, and these photographs -- real or fake -- come out in discovery." "Legal blackmail." "It's elegant." "It's, uh, it's wrong, is what it is." "Can I have another..." "Coming right up, sir." "Thanks." "Do you want some?" "There you go." "Sometimes I don't know who's done more for the people around here, Nate -- you or me." "Well..." "I need you now." "I don't know what to do." "Go home, Ed." "I got this." "I'm going to get my team to bury this guy Rockwell." "You got my word." "Rockwell is bulletproof." "Of course." "The man is all about C.G." "I mean, maybe -- maybe -- you can get some quality C.G. in a still-frame, but when I lay down my ten-fifty old-school practical " "Stop -- stop with the "Star Trek" stuff again!" ""Wars"!" "Damn it, it's "Star Wars."" "And -- and that C.G.I. Yoda they used in the prequels is an insult to the puppet they " "You know what, man?" "It's not even worth discussing." "You're the only one discussing it." "I kind of like C.G.I. Yoda." "Hey, Hardison, what do we got on this guy Rockwell?" "Look, Parker, just tell him what he wants to hear." "Did my ears..." "All right, Nate." "We're scraping rock bottom here." "This guy does crisis P.R., and the whole thing's done on the whisper." "He doesn't just defend his clients, he attacks their enemies -- by any means necessary." "Creating dirt where he can't find any." "Okay, but, guys, I mean, we've done this kind of thing before." "Video, photo frame-ups..." "Not like this, Nate." "This man is like a ninja assassin." "He's turned it into an art form." "We're talking politicians, Hollywood starlets, even cheating spouses." "You know, word is," "Rockwell made his bones a few years back by taking down a congressman." "You see, the rep received some serious praise for the speech that he gave that introduced a bill in D.C., right?" "Rockwell, the genius that he is, goes and writes a fake political essay, back-dates it, and then bribes a clerk to file it in the Library of Congress." "Rockwell leaks the news that the rep plagiarized the essay, the bill dies, and so does the congressman's career." "Well, he knew that no one in D.C. was gonna admit to not having read that essay, and how the public were gonna respond." "Yeah, and how to manipulate the media." "Oh, yeah." "Rockwell's brilliant." "He's ruthless." "Stone-cold solid." "It's a shame we got to take the man down." "I'd almost consider making him a part of the team." "Yeah, uh, Rockwell has his boot on my friend's throat, Hardison." "I said, "almost."" "Listen, what do we know about him personally?" "Nothing." "His online footprint is scrubbed clean." "Website has an e-mail box, the corporate website -- that's it -- no phone." "Only way I found the office address was by tracing back some old business-license application." "Yeah, we can tell you where he gets his morning coffee." " That's about it." " This is no good." "Well, the usual play on a guy like this is to ruin his reputation, you know, undermine his credibility." "Yeah, but he has no reputation, so..." "This guy's a ghost, Nate." "He operates like we do." "His clients are by referral, and he stays in the shadows." "How we supposed to take this guy down?" "The same way we would destroy me." "I mean, what we're really asking here is, how would I destroy myself?" "Yeah, and you can't say "booze." Hmm." "If somebody lives in the shadows, you want to bring them into the light." "I mean, what if we made this guy...famous?" "No." "Bad idea." "We shouldn't do that." "Nate's right." "It's a siren song." "Who do we know that can resist the warmth of the spotlight?" "We give him just one little taste." "First of all, we don't even know how this guy's gonna react, okay?" "And say, what if it does blow up, huh?" "What if we get too close to the spotlight?" "Look, Nate, we already got enough unwanted attention, a la somebody listening in on the apartment." "Okay, here's the plan." "We are not gonna take Rockwell down." "We are gonna build him up." "We're gonna turn him into a hero." "We'll then find all the grimy little secrets that he has, and then we are going to discredit him, and no one will ever trust what he has to say about Ed Kelley." "Parker!" "I'm not gonna be able to unhear that "C.G.I. Yoda" thing." "Cut me deep, woman." "That cut me deep." "I can resist the spotlight, by the way." "Of course you can." "Never see you taking any kind of victory lap after you've pushed us all to the edge, or sticking around to gloat over the bad guy being dragged away." "Hmm." "Is that sarcasm?" "A mild amount." "Hey!" "Hey!" "Give me the purse." "Give me the purse, lady, and nobody gets hurt." "Hey!" "That's my paycheck!" "Give me the purse." "Give me the purse." "And my mother's medicine!" "Help!" "Hey, leave her alone!" "Really?" "Stop." "Good job." "My baby!" "My baby!" "Help!" "Help!" "Huh?" "Ooh." "Wonder if that comes in a higher heel." "I choked on a hot dog." "On...purpose." "And Rockwell was checking his e-mail, and some huge dude came over and..." "I-I got heimlich'ed." "Yeah, all right." "All right, listen, guys." "This is gonna be harder than we thought." "Who the hell shops here?" "It's $3 a banana." "Coffee, sir?" "I don't think so." "Oh." "Hey, Nate." "Can I just reiterate that I have almost no frame of reference for what I'm being asked to do here?" "Okay, both feeds are up." "Hardison, you're gonna be fine." "And...here he comes..." "Right on schedule." "20 seconds, Hardison." "Uh, medium half-caf Indonesian civet, with soy milk." "Great." "Just one moment." "Okay, Hardison, you're up." "All right, everybody chill out." "Just relax." "Aah!" "Everybody calm down." "Hey, hey!" "Shut up." "Chill." "Relax." "Sir, go back to eating your scone." "Everybody just cool out." "Everybody calm down." "Be cool." "You can go home with a story to tell your grandkids." "Sir, please get back." "Back up." "I'm not playing." "Now, look here." "It's gonna go like this." "A'ight?" "Money in the bag." "You know how it goes." "Or I'm gonna start cappin' fools." "I'm not playing." "Nate, I told you you should have let me do this." "Come on, now." "Faster." "You taking your time?" "You're gonna get us all killed!" "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!" "What's up, cat?" "Okay, Hardison, you've got to get him away from the door." " Where you going?" " Just let me get out of here with my coffee, man." "I'm sorry, I thought I'm the one that had the gun up in here." "W-what is this?" "What is " " Mmm." "Moving into position." "This is disgusting." "Sir, get your ass on." "Get your ass." "Should shoot you for your bad taste." "Come on." "Looks like I got me a little hostage for when the popo come." "How you want it, man -- east coast, west coast?" "Hardison, don't hurt him." "You don't -- you don't want me." "I want you." "No, no, no." "You don't want me." "When the cops get here, they see you got a male hostage -- no one's gonna care." "Who's gonna watch that on the evening news, man?" "You -- you want her." "Huh?" "I'm telling you -- she'd make a much better hostage than me." "They'll be falling all over themselves giving you whatever you want." "You want her as a hostage." "She'd make a much better hostage -- What?" "!" "No!" "Okay, Hardison." "Hurt him as much as you like." "Eliot, now!" "Okay, we got it." "Hardison, when you finish your jog," "I want you to scrub the footage." "I want to see his face clear as a bell." "Sophie, you stay with him." "Stay in his pocket." "We got to get him to stick around and sign some autographs." "Uh, Nate?" "What?" "He's taking off." "This guy's not a hero." "No." "He's the only thing better than a hero." "He's a mystery." "Unh!" "Now, that is a practical special effect." "No computer-generated cheat." "That's something the audience can really invest in." "Oh, you see that?" "Boss move, ain't it?" "What do we got on the web?" "Whoa!" "320,000 hits?" "Mm-hmm." "And that's just in a few hours, ladies and gentlemen." "I'm fixing to add another zero to that by tonight!" "How?" "Well, you see, in order to share our video with people all over the virtual world, you first have to be confirmed as somebody's friend or contact..." "Unless you're me." "Security was a holy terror, but I managed to upload a worm that will backdoor this dummy profile into users' friend lists and expand this network at a geometric rate." "Mm." "So, "underhill24601"..." "Just made 11 million friends today." "Yeah." "I'm " " I'm still..." "This man saved my life." "Reports are in about a rare instance of true heroism, where a man foiled an armed robbery in a local coffee shop." "Mr. Rockwell, sir, you're on the news." "...Who is this as of yet unidentified hero?" "This "Venti Vigilante," as he's being called..." "It's a mistake." "Turn it off." "Get back to work." "Though our sources here at WODC are still searching high and low to track him down." "Hey, hey." "That's him." "Oh, hey, man." "That's the guy." "Come on." "Go ahead." "Go on, yeah." "A medium half-caf Indonesian civet, with soy milk " "On the house." "Thank you." "Thank you." "Hey." "Hey!" "You." "I know you." "Yeah, man, I know this guy." "You're -- you're a hero." "Ha ha ha!" "Really?" "The slow clap?" "Yeah." "Yeah, man." "That's stupid." "I got them all the time in high school." "You didn't get one of those in high school?" "For jackass of the year?" "...The man who, at great risk to himself, disarmed and chased off a masked gunman..." "My friends over there said you're famous." "Is that true?" "Are you a drummer or something?" " No." " Or are you one of those big Internet-company guys, like the kids in that movie?" "Um, you might have seen me on the..." "TV." "Oh, TV star." "Squee." "My friends are throwing a party this weekend." "Call me." "Okay." "Cheers." "Mm." "Now." "Call me now " "So I have your phone number in my phone." "You're not dialing." "Ooh." "Oh." "Got it." "I think I'm getting better at this." "I'm cloning Rockwell's cell right now." "Good work, girl." "I didn't even stab him." "Yeah." "We are so proud of you." "Uh..." "No-stabbing wednesdays -- new tradition." "Thank God for an appointment." "Maybe we can get back to life around here." "What business is he in?" "I'm in the household-name business, Mr. Rockwell." "Just a sec." "Yeah, uh, cancel it." "Congresswoman ends up on my schedule one more time, I'm gonna have to fire you." "Gotta go." "Gillis." "Henry K. Gillis." "How do you do?" "All right." "Nothing to worry about." "A little rough around the edges, but we can work with that." "You're a media consultant." "Same line of work as you are, except I build people up." "Nobody better at it than me." "Then why have I never heard of you?" "Well, the same reason I've never heard of you until I turned on my TV last night " "Careful design." "Laws, sausages, and celebrities, kid." "A lot easier to control the spotlight when you're not standing in it." "Well, then, with all due respect, Mr. Gillis..." "Oh!" "...Why would I want to be standing in it?" "Mr. Rockwell, one question!" "Thank you." "Thank you." "You got no choice." "What are you up to now, 2 million YouTube hits?" "I mean, this thing -- it's not gonna go away." "Now, the media, they're gonna hound you day and night -- you know that, we both know that -- until you give them something, or they'll make something up on their own." "Now, listen." "I know you, Rockwell." "You can't be satisfied just standing just outside the spotlight forever." "Nobody ever is." "These people that you take down, they don't deserve their wealth, their fame " "You do." "You're better than they are." "Don't abandon this opportunity " "This opportunity to step out of the shadows and onto the stage." "Trying to convince a man to step onto the third rail." "Without getting too close to it himself." "Your public wants to meet you." "That's because you're gonna tell them" "I'm someone they want to meet." "The public will buy any lie we push on them." "They still believe the good life is out there." "Look, I'll tell you what." "Why don't you give me a week?" "Let me show you what I can do." "You know, I already got you booked on "Washington Week."" "That's not even the highest-rated political show in its slot." "Three stages, my friend -- pundit, sage, and guru." ""Washington Week" is fertile ground." "You make a splash, you drop some controversial comments." "I mean, you do that on the highest-rated show, you know, the hair-dos, they'll be coming after you guns a-blazin'." "This way, I gain some traction." "You gain some traction." "Exactly." "Now, you play this right, pick every punch, we're gonna ride this wave all the way to the top." "You are gonna be swimming in a river of money." "Just don't give them your best stuff until we -- we get the 7-figure book deal." "Are you with me so far?" "Because..." "I would like to start this off with a bang." "Now, my team has already secured an auditorium -- standing room only, place is packed -- to listen to you tonight give a motivational speech on ordinary heroism." "We do?" "Oh, yeah, just as soon as you get a place and clear it out." "Run a background check on Gillis here." "I want to know everything." "He's in." "Background check -- got it." "Nate, we're on it." "All right." "Do this right, guys, we got him." "We're right on the verge." "I mean, you know, he took the bait." "I mean, it's the only way to fix Ed Kelley's whole " "Wait." "You're not doing this for Ed Kelley." "You're pushing this hard 'cause of Rockwell." "You know, you want to do a confidential client list, phone records, and financials." "Nate, I got it." "He works from the shadows deciding who to take down, convinced he's making the world a better place, implying a certain moral superiority over his victims." "Any of this sound like someone we know?" "That's good!" "But, no, you got all that right, but I think you want to be careful you don't make me a little bit too " "Hey, look, if there's nothing embarrassing for him to find on you, it makes you look like you're not for real." "I know, but here's the thing." "You are saying that I helped the dictator of Mogutu rise to power." "He committed genocide, Hardison." "Problem?" "Apparently not." "Don't get so focused on him, you forget the bigger game." "We all know that fame's a monster, and here you are poking at it with a stick." "Uh, Eliot, Parker, how we doing on the seminar?" "Well, it takes time, Nate." "There's over 100 motivational speeches in Boston every day." "Like "Emotion is Your Friend."" "Ooh!" "That's good." ""Aspire or Expire."" "This woman right here " "She talks for two hours about all the things she misses doing with her kids on an average day." "Look." "Why, did they die?" "No." "No." "They just...went to college." "All right, stop." "Stop." "Back away from the brochures." "Back away from the brochures!" "Guys, guys, guys." "Can we please speed this up?" "Time is a factor here." "Well, what do you want me to do, Nate?" "Huh?" "How's this guy gonna play to a crowd that shows up for..." ""You can't love him until you love you"?" "We should go to that one, anyway." "Well, the guy we're clearing out was a fireman for 43 years and just donated a kidney to his best friend." "We're not gonna hurt him." "I'm just saying, it's lucky we don't believe in hell." "Nate believes in hell." "Shoot, I believe in hell." "Oh, yeah." "Mr. Jamison!" "What an honor!" "Ah." "Hello." "80 years old and still saving lives." "This way, please." "Oh." "Ah, just right through here." "Come on, let's go." "Where's my speech?" "The auditorium is through here, Mr. Jamison." "I have to warn you -- the lights are gonna be very, very bright." "You're not gonna be able to make out any of the faces in the auditorium, but just pick a spot on the back " " Ooh." "On the back of the wall, and just let it rip." "Ooh." "Ladies and gentlemen " "Wow, what a fantastic turnout." "Thank you so much for coming." "I give you the man who... did something that... made a difference!" "Hello." "Oh, my." "It's terribly bright." "I can't see any of you." "All right, Hardison, how'd that speech come out?" "Oh, it's some of my finest work." "How is he?" "Well, building people up isn't exactly his thing." "All right, Rockwell." "Hey." "Listen." "Now, this is not some corporate snoozer with a bunch of bored-to-tears executives." "These people paid good money to be inspired." "What am I supposed to do with this?" ""You can be a hero, too." Who the hell wrote this crap?" "Excuse you?" "Let's see you do better on such short notice." "People are just ungrateful." "Listen." "Do you have any idea why these people are here?" "Do you have any idea why everybody wants a piece of you?" "Because everything you ever wanted in your life is at your fingertips right now!" "The good life." "This "crap" -- this is how you get what you want." "Everything you want is in front of this audience Reed Rockwell." "...right now." "Recognition, validation -- those are the things that are gonna fill that hole that is somewhere deep inside you, take away the pain." "Now, you go out there and take it!" "...I give you the Venti Vigilante." "I..." "I..." "I-I don't even know what I'm doing up here." "I just..." "I-I didn't have my caffeine yet one morning, and..." "Well..." "You can be a hero, too." "We -- we all like to think that when we find ourselves in the heat of danger -- the moment of truth -- when we have to make a decision and act, that we will rise to the occasion," "but I'll let you in on a little secret." "I wasn't sure that I could." "We all have phenomenal capacities to do good, to make the world a better place -- more than we give ourselves credit for." "I'm the one with the cameras pointed at me, but..." "There's heroism everywhere, in each and every one of you." "We can all be heroes." "Thank you." "Wow." "They love him." "Even better than that, Nate -- the amount of tweets and status updates that have come in since the speech -- they're talking about him." "How'd I do?" "Masterful!" "Better than I ever dreamed." "I'm telling you, we're gonna go on to the next step now." "News interviews, um, everything -- but no time to waste." "Now, I'm gonna set up meetings -- Nate." "Oh." "Yeah." "I'm talking to my client right now." "Hey, tell him that "Washington Week" called." "Yeah." "Listen, something huge is going on." "I'm working on something really big." "So I'm gonna work the phones for about an hour." "Why don't you go to the office?" "And I'll meet you there in about an hour." "Okay, what can I do?" "What you can do is start jotting down things for your memoir." "The Venti Vigilante has been identified as Reed Rockwell..." "Hey." "Phones are ringing off the hook." "The Globe wants to do an interview with you." "Corporate speaking gigs are lining up." "And CNN would like to do a story." "They want to bring you in end of the week." "You know, we can just do a background check and kind of, you know, wait for the YouTube hits to pile up." "Background check?" "Oh, yeah, nothing to worry about." "They just want to bring you in, see if they like you, put you on tape, that kind of thing." "Good day's work." "...Rockwell's manager, Henry K. Gillis, released a statement praising his client's heroic deed." "Morning, Hardison." "Ah." "We're in the homestretch." "We're going to take this guy to the national level, create and leak falsified evidence against him." "And we'll take him down hard." "Nate..." "Rockwell just withdrew 25 grand from his account in small bills." "Why would he need so much hard cash?" "Don't know." "It doesn't sound like a positive development." "What do you want us to do?" "Follow the money." "Why wouldn't you let me drive?" "This is my car." "All right, Nate." "We just got off at Lowell, about 20 minutes out." "Tailing Rockwell's friend with the suitcase full of money." "Hometown?" "Rockwell's not from Lowell." "He's from Methuen." "Went to Tenney." "Illegitimate kid." "Or Reed used to be Rita." "What?" "We were all thinking it." "Really?" "That's like the line right there, and you just cartwheel " "Could have been a woman." "All right, guys, guys, guys, guys." "So we have no idea what Rockwell's up to here." "Hey, I wonder if Nate still thinks he's got all the angles of this fame thing covered." "You know, Sophie, I can hear you." "Really?" " Go away." "I'm going to call the cops." " Mr. Rockwell " "Okay." "There's a woman in a trailer who's arguing with Rockwell's thug." "I think this is gonna get physical in about 30 seconds." "Open the door " " Now!" "Get out of my house!" "Who the hell are you?" "Neighborhood watch." "Eliot, let him go." "Until that guy showed up on my front steps," "I hadn't heard from Reed Rockwell in forever." "How did you know him?" "He grew up a couple towns over." "He dated a girl from my class." "Night of the prom, me and my boyfriend, P.J., were in a car with Reed and this girl Missy, all blitzed out of our mind." "And we got into an accident..." "And Missy was killed." "I wonder why he's trying to buy her silence." "This is all that comes up about the accident." "Wasn't even mentioned in the Globe, only local papers." "Rockwell's worried about a background check." "Rockwell -- he knows how to prey on people's dark secrets, 'cause he has one himself." "I think that Rockwell was driving the car and afterwards, made it look like he wasn't." "Rockwell the one driving?" "I swear." "I even took a picture..." "Of everybody from the backseat after we left the party." "But he was never arrested." "No." "I don't understand what happened." "When I took the camera to the police a couple of days later, the negative showed P.J. In the driver's seat." "What?" "It works." "P.J. went to jail for vehicular manslaughter." "And Reed Rockwell went free." "P.J. would have never been driving that car if he had been drinking." "You have to be" "He had a wrestling scholarship waiting for him at B.C." "He was talking about proposing." "I've been trying to tell the cops this for the last 14 years." "Okay, we got it." "Now, here, Rockwell is in the passenger's seat, and he's smiling." "Hardison, is there any way that Rockwell could have doctored the film negative?" "We're talking prehistoric technology." "He'd have to switch out the entire roll, put in a new one with the same pictures, except the one he changed." "It's epic but not impossible." "Nate, this girl's got almost nothing." "You didn't take the money, Emma." "I don't want anything from Reed Rockwell." "He sends a guy here with 25k Trying to get me to stay quiet about the accident." "I told him to get lost." "Look, thanks for...talking to us." "Yeah." "You guys know Rockwell?" "Is he famous or something?" "We're gonna make sure of it." "Okay, I want you two to go get the doctored film negative from the police evidence archive." "Do whatever you have to do." "Just get it." "Oh, man." "Can you find the ark of the covenant back there?" "How am I supposed to find anything?" "I don't know." "Afternoon, ma'am." "How you doing?" "I'm writing a piece for the Police Gazette, right?" "On the unsung heroes of the justice system." "The civilians like yourself who keep the archives from...catching fire." "Will you be needing any photographs for your piece, mister..." "Par...dison -- "Pardison" is my name." "That's Pardison -- it's Swahili." "Um..." "I've noticed that you have a very unconventional filing system for your archive." "So, where would one such as myself find, like, a-a prosecutor from the late '90s, like a... '90s..." "...Tom Randall?" "Oh, him!" "I keep him right back there." "Back -- back -- him -- He's in the southeast corner?" "In..." "What was that, Mr. Pardison?" "I didn't sa" " I said -- I said what you said." "Him -- he's in the southeast corner?" "Oh, dear." "Ha!" "It's dusty." "Caught the back of my throat, right up in there, right up in there." "You know what?" "I-I think I'm gonna actually go ahead and get some pictures, to " " Yeah." "So, all right." "You take care." "A-all right." "All right." "All right." "Bye-bye." "All right." "We can still make this work." "I don't know why I'm sitting here listening to a new plan." "Well, the first one's not going all that well." "This playing-with-fame thing -- it's reckless." "You're not controlling the mark." "All right, we're operating without a net." "Somebody's gonna get hurt." "Eliot, why don't you just take the rest of the job off?" "Consciously or not," "I think you look at Reed Rockwell and see everything you hate about Nathan " "Any way I can get you to not finish that thought?" "Every time something goes wrong, you push harder, and now you're pushing to ruin Rockwell so hard, you're going to end up ruining yourself." "Maybe that's what you're trying to do." "Nate..." "I think he developed and then took a new shot of every picture on the roll." "The one he alters right here in the middle, man " "I mean, the tech at the time was primitive at best, but it's really a seamless job." "Just skip to the last page, please." "We're not gonna be able to nail Rockwell for the car accident." "What do you mean it didn't work?" "How the hell did you screw this up?" "!" "There was somebody with her." "Somebody?" "He -- he beat me up with the screen door." "What?" "!" "Is that girl's life really only worth $25,000, Reed?" "How's about 14 years of prison for my man?" "That part of the payoff?" "See, after your friend left," "I started looking through some things from back then, and I found a picture you may have missed." "Pretty sure it's worth more than 25k." "Tell me what figure you had in mind." "How's about 250?" "Or what?" "Or you go to the local news." "Or I talk to the first reporter who will take my call." "Do you have any idea who you're screwing with?" "I'll be in an old Buick." "You wait for me under the bridge." "You got one hour." "And it better be you personally, Reed." "Climb into the back of the car, hand over the money " "I hand you the evidence, you get out of the car." "Simple as that." "Very good." "You did great." "He's all yours, Nate." "Looks like I missed something." "Calm down, Rockwell." "Use your words." "If there's a problem, we'll fix it." "I'm being blackmailed!" "This bitch I knew half a lifetime ago -- 14 years -- she just..." "I-I was in a car accident in high school." "This girl I know got killed." "We were all drunk." "I was not the one driving." "I swear to God." "But the cops came." "I was still on the scene." "And now -- now " "This girl who was in the car with us wants 250 grand or she's gonna go public and say that I was the one at the wheel." "Uh-huh." "Wow." "That's really something." "Look." "Look, I-I already tried to make this go away." "Not hard enough." "Sit down." "We are at the goal line here, Rockwell." "Now, you can't afford to have a scandal like this." "We both know that it doesn't matter if it's trumped up or real." "Look." "This request... for the $250,000... maybe it's not such a bad thing." "What?" "W-what are you talking about?" "Comparatively, it is a lot of money, but it means that the girl doesn't want to string this out over a bunch of payments." "She wants to take the money now and disappear." "Okay?" "You both win." "No, Gillis..." "She wins." "I'm out $250,000!" "I wouldn't worry about that." "I mean, look, you'll make that money back in a month of speaking engagements, you know, one week of book signings." "Don't worry about that." "The thing is this -- you are now..." "You're not in the shadows anymore, Rockwell." "Okay?" "You are -- you are at the whim of the media." "And we both know what they'll do with a story like this." "No way I'm letting that bitch get away with this." "She gives me her evidence, I get out of her car you make sure this is over." "Take the land rover." "You got it." "Long time, Emma." "Just hand over the photo." "Hey." "Hey!" "What are you doing?" "What the..." "Where the hell are we going?" "!" "To get the evidence." "I wasn't stupid enough to bring it with me!" "Just pull the damn car over!" "This is amateur crap." "Wait." "Wait, I know you from the " "I've seen you before." "I " " What the hell is going on here?" "!" "Oh, my God." "Oh, not again." "Not again." "Not again." "Where the hell are you, Kreese?" "I'm back at the office." "Give me a call the second you..." "Evening, Mr. Rockwell." "Why are you trying to deny this, Mr. Rockwell?" "Because I didn't cause any accident." "I was the victim." "I just got finished telling you." "What, did you pull that badge out of a cereal box?" "Give me the keys." "Any interest in changing your statement there, Froot Loops?" " What is this?" " Oh, those are your phone records, Rockwell." "Which show dozens of calls and texts to the number of that girl who was in that car you just smacked up." "Call me now -- so I have your phone..." "Oh." "Got it." "I'm cloning Rockwell's cell right now." "Cute little blond girl like that " "What, were you stalking her?" "See, what we're getting at here is called intent." "I was " " I was not stalking that girl." "I-I hardly knew her." "The only reason I was in her car is 'cause she was trying to blackmail me." "I swear to God!" "Blackmailing you?" "Yes." "For this drunk-driving accident 14 years ago." "No, I wasn't at fault!" "For which accident?" "!" "Neither!" "You guys have -- my briefcase." "Get my briefcase." "There's 250 grand in there." "It's the payoff money." "It'll prove that she was trying to extort " "Would that be this briefcase?" "Wait." "How..." "Sleep tight, my man." "I-I..." "No." "No, no, no." "This evidence has been digitally altered!" "This is not the real photograph." "I-I..." "Tell me about it." "State's Attorney Kelley personally oversaw the Lowell native's release after spending the last 14 years behind bars for a crime he didn't commit." "Think they're happy now " "Wait till they see what's in that briefcase waiting at home for them." "Enough to fix their screen door." "Couple hundred thousand of them." "...Yet sadness over the death of an innocent girl" " in the car accident..." " All right." "That led to his incarceration 14 years ago." "It was reckless." "It was worth it." "Yeah, this time." "Bet you're starting to like that C.G.I. Yoda a little bit now?" "Yeah, when he gives back the childhood he stole from me." "Why don't you just ask me to join the dark side?" "Go ahead." ""Well, Nate, winning isn't everything."" "You know, for a while there, you were an honest man." "And then for a while, you were a thief." "Yeah, maybe I'm both." "You can't be both." "I'm just not sure at this point which one I want to win." "Now to return to one of the top stories tonight, the shockingly brief rise and fall of Reed Rockwell, whose foiling of a coffee-house robbery on Tuesday was overshadowed by his arrest and subsequent confession." "New evidence suggests that Rockwell was the driver who caused the accident That resulted in P.J. Tiernan's incarceration" "14 years ago." "Yeah." "Mr. Ford, that was a hell of a piece of work." "The gentleman that was listening in on my apartment, I presume." "Wiretaps without warrants are a felony." "Listen, here's the thing." "We had some outstanding contracts with Mr. Rockwell." "I don't suppose you'd consider taking them on for a substantial fee." "I don't work that way." "You honestly don't, do you?" "You actually think you're one of the good guys." "You care to talk this over face-to-face?" "Congratulations again." "Getting rid of scum like Rockwell -- you made the world a better place." "And information from the original accident scene states that Rockwell was under the influence of alcohol at the time." "And in a bizarre twist," "Rockwell was caught on a local traffic camera tonight causing yet another car accident."