Dream Teams: Working Together Without Falling Apart - Hardcover

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Shane Snow is a science and business journalist and the co-founder of Contently, one of Inc's fastest growing companies and Crain's and Ad Age's best places to work in America. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Wired, The Washington Post, Fast Company, Time, and GQ. His first book, Smartcuts, has made him a highly sought-after speaker around the world on innovation and lateral thinking.

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ONE

Buddy Cops

and Mountaintops

"I think I ruined the wedding."

1.

The Chicago detectives were in Baltimore, of all places, investigating a train robbery (of all things!) when they learned about the plot to kill their hometown congressman.

It was February and cold outside the office bearing the name "John H. Hutchinson, Stock Broker" on South Street near Baltimore's Inner Harbor. The office was a front-a temporary headquarters for agents of Hutchinson's private detective firm. The firm specialized in fraud and corporate espionage, particularly for clients who wanted to keep things quiet.

Hutchinson's detectives had inhabited this secret office for several weeks now. They were there at the behest of the president of a local railroad company, a man named Samuel Felton. He'd hired them to look into a rumor about a plot to ruin him by disrupting millions of dollars of train cargo. Local politics were tense in Baltimore at the time, and Felton had feared "an extensive and organized conspiracy" that included members of the city police, or even higher up. Paranoid as he was, Felton decided to hire outsiders to suss out whether the rumors had merit, before involving authorities.

And when it came to that sort of thing, Hutchinson was the best. A classic entrepreneur, he was a school dropout with a knack for solving puzzles. This led him to become a police detective, then to open a private firm. After ten years in operation, Hutchinson still personally masterminded most high-profile jobs.

For the Baltimore Railroad case, he had also staffed his finest crew:

Detective Webster was the principal investigator on the case. He was a tall British immigrant, with curly hair and a beard that can be best described as "hipster."  Webster was tough and experienced and unafraid to kick down a door or jump from a moving train-as he once did while chasing a fleeing suspect. A family man with four kids, he'd earned his stripes as an NYPD officer for over a decade.

Webster's counterpart, Detective Warne, on the other hand, was sly, charismatic, and twenty-eight years old. Where Webster was a decisive man of action, Warne was the agency's smooth talker and master of disguise-thin and chameleonlike, with a knack for getting people to cough up information.

The two had been chasing down Felton's railroad conspiracy at various Baltimore PD haunts for a month when they overheard a rumor that sent them racing back to base. In the course of that month, they had determined that a group of corrupt officials and politically disenfranchised socialites indeed had it out for Felton. But as far as they could tell, the group had done little but talk trash about him and other high-profile figures in Baltimore.

Webster, who knew how to relate to police officers, had been buddying up with off-duty drunks at local cop bars. Meanwhile, Warne was spending evenings in disguise at elite social hangouts, eavesdropping on the conversations of potential conspirators. In this manner, the two pieced together the troubling details of what was really afoot:

Basically, it was terrorism. The group, frustrated at the state of national politics that they felt was leaving Baltimore behind, wanted to send a message: the government had failed. "Look at our city," one conspirator confided, "and tell me if we are not going to ruin." They'd considered several ways to draw attention to this point, like ruining Felton's railroad line. But the group had recently cooked up plans to do something much less subtle: assassinate a high-profile congressman who would soon be passing through town.

The congressman-a popular but polarizing Republican-was the perfect target. He represented everything these extremists hated about the current state of politics. They suspected that his death, while shocking, would spark the dialogue they desired. They'd then knock off Maryland's governor for good measure. Each would die as an example, one conspirator said, of a "traitor to God and this country."

The conspiracy reached high. A police captain named Ferrandini had vowed that the out-of-state congressman would "die in this city." And police chief George Kane, who was sympathetic to the extremists' cause, was willing to turn a blind eye.

The congressman had made public plans to travel among the citizens-by train-from Illinois to Washington, with a series of speaking events scheduled en route. After stopping at Columbus, Pittsburgh, New York, Philadelphia, and Harrisburg, he would board a train to Baltimore. There a driver would take him to the Eutaw House, where he would deliver a short speech. After the speech, the driver would take him to a train station a mile away, for a final leg to Washington, DC.

Although it's customary in America for local police to provide an armed escort for visiting politicians-often a showy spectacle of blocked roads and sirens-the plan was for Chief Kane to claim at the last minute that he could not spare any officers to meet the congressman's entourage at the train station. The man and his personal detail would be on their own.

The conspirators would post agents along the route, sending word of the congressman's progress toward Baltimore. They had choreographed a "street fight" to break out as he passed through the vestibule at the train station to meet his driver. The fight would distract the transit security. Simultaneously, a mob of faux commuters would swarm the area. Several of these would be armed men-including at least one police officer-who would proceed to gun down the congressman and his entourage.

When he reviewed Webster's and Warne's intel, Hutchinson spiraled into anxiety. This was much bigger than railroad sabotage indeed. They needed to alert some proper authorities. But how far up did the conspiracy go? Hutchinson dispatched Warne to alert the congressman and advise he go straight to Washington and skip the speaking tour.

But the congressman deliberated: Given the current climate, canceling all these speeches could be politically disastrous. And tipping off the terrorists now would make them harder to catch later. Still, evidence of the murder plot was compelling. He asked Warne: Could they discreetly get him to DC after his final event in Harrisburg-and leave authorities out of it?

Hutchinson reluctantly agreed, understanding that any leak could hamper an investigation into the wider conspiracy. But he was nervous. This was not corporate espionage. It was life and death. And anyone could be a conspirator.

Except for Mr. Felton, Hutchinson decided. He'd enlisted them to investigate these corrupt officials in the first place. He had to be clean. Now it was their turn to enlist him.

So, with Felton's help, the detectives devised a plan.

On the night of the planned murder, after a packed speaking event in Harrisburg, the Republican from IllinoisÕs Seventh District excused himself to his hotel room. He donned the disguise that Warne had prepared for him-a felt hat and slouchy overcoat-and exited the hotel alone through a back entrance. Hutchinson and a bodyguard met him there and accompanied him to the midnight train to Philly. Warne was waiting, having reserved a car for their Òfamily,Ó whose Òinvalid brotherÓ needed special assistance.

While changing trains in Philadelphia, the disguised congressman stumbled through the station, playing the part of the disabled brother marvelously. The conspirators who camped out to alert the gang ahead didn't notice as the group...