One

A polar bear did him in. The biggest damned polar bear anyone had ever seen in or around Prudhoe Bay in the last twenty-five years, or so it was reported.

Arrogance got him killed, though, and if William Emmett Harrington hadn't been such a narcissist, he might still be alive. But he was a narcissist, and he was also a braggart.

The only topic of conversation William was interested in was William, and since he hadn't accomplished much of anything significant in his twenty-eight years on earth, he was painfully boring.

William lived off his inheritance, a hefty trust fund set up by his grandfather, Henry Emmett Harrington, who must have had an inkling of the lazy-ass gene he was passing down, because his son, Morris Emmett Harrington, didn't work a day in his life. And Wil?liam happily followed in his father's footsteps.

Like all the Harrington men before him, William was a handsome devil and knew it. He didn't have any trouble getting women into his bed, but he could never lure any of them back for a repeat performance. No wonder. William treated sex like a race he had to win in order to prove that he was the best, and because he really was a narcissist, he didn't care about satisfying his partner. What he wanted was all that mattered.

His past conquests had come up with various nicknames for him. Pig was one. Quick Trip was another. But the one that was uttered most behind his back was The Minute Man. All the women who had gone to bed with him knew exactly what that meant.

Besides self-gratification, William's other passion was running. He'd made it a full-time job because, as with sex, he was shockingly fast. In the past year he had accumulated twenty-four first-place prizes within a six-state area, and he was about to enter a 5K race in his hometown of Chicago to collect his twenty-fifth. Since he believed crossing the finish line first was going to be a momentous event that everyone in Chicago would want to read about, he called the Chicago Tribune and suggested they do a feature article about him in the Sunday paper. Harrington also mentioned more than once how photogenic he was and how a full-color photo of him would enhance the article.

One of the local news editors at the Tribune took the call and ?patiently listened to William's pitch, then bounced him to one of the entertainment editors, who quickly bounced him to one of the sports columnists, who bounced him to one of the health and fitness editors, who wrote an entire article on the top-five allergens plaguing Chicago while he listened to the spiel. None of them was impressed or interested. The last editor to speak to William suggested that he give him a call back when he had ninety-nine wins under his belt and was going for one hundred.

William wasn't discouraged. He immediately called the Chicago Sun Times and explained his idea for a story. He was rejected yet again.

William realized he was going to have to lower his expectations if he wanted to see his name in print, and so he contacted the Illinois Chronicle, a small but popular neighborhood newspaper that focused primarily on local issues and entertainment.

The editor in chief, Herman Anthony Bitterman, was an antacid-popping seasoned veteran of the press with a pronounced Brooklyn accent. For thirty years he had been on the foreign desk of The New York Times and had garnered several prestigious honors including the RFK Journalism Award and the Polk Award, but when his good-for-nothing son-in-law ran off with another woman--his daughter's yoga instructor, for the love of God--Herman retired from the Times and moved with his wife, Marissa, to Chicago where she had grown up and...

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