Bird Dream by Matt Higgins

Author:Matt Higgins [Higgins, Matt]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780698163829
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2014-07-30T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

THE TRIAL

That immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves, so far within us, that it remains intact though all the outer character seem gone; bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of a valor-ruined man.

—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

About the time Loïc got injured, the media sank its teeth into the wingsuit landing story. In New York for court appearances, Jeb took the opportunity to make the rounds among the city’s media outlets. On December 10, 2007, a story about the quest to land a wingsuit appeared on page 1 of the New York Times. Soon Jeb landed on Today, where he was interviewed by Matt Lauer, and The Colbert Report, where he told Stephen Colbert about his goal of jumping from an aircraft without deploying a parachute.

“Um . . .” Colbert said, chuckling. “I guarantee you, you will eventually land on the ground without deploying a parachute.”

“The thing is, doing it again,” Jeb said.

“Oh, doing it twice,” Colbert cracked. “And that is the trick.”

Jeb described how he needed money to build a runway.

“Is it like two miles of bathroom tile with a little bit of wet soap on it so you can just slide in on a belly landing?” Colbert asked, urging Jeb to generate excitement by wearing a red-white-and-blue wingsuit and bring glory to America.

When Jeb said he only wears black, Colbert eyeballed him for a second. “Is that because . . .” he said, adopting a tone of profound concern, “you’re sad inside?”

All joking aside, Jeb had reason to be down. His legal problems only continued to grow more complicated. On January 15, 2008, he filed a countersuit against the Empire State Building Company for $30 million, citing its employees for defaming his character, unlawfully imprisoning him on the observation level, and causing emotional distress and lost income. He announced the suit during a press conference on the steps of the neo-Hellenic State Supreme Court building downtown, Heller at his side. He issued reporters a video of events on the eighty-sixth floor and said the whole episode might have been averted had the Empire State Building bothered with adequate security measures, measures that would have prevented someone like him from getting to the ledge at all. “Very small tweaks in their security will make it impossible to jump off that building,” he told the Times. “I would be more than happy to come in there and show them how to do that.” How representatives from the Empire State Building felt about his offer, they never made clear, but they did not avail themselves of Jeb’s services.

The countersuit was a strategy designed to push back against police and prosecutors. Video footage from Jeb’s helmet cam had been seized when he was arrested but went missing from a police evidence room. All of which took on greater urgency when, in March, a state supreme court appellate division panel unanimously reinstated the indictment—not for felony reckless endangerment this time, but for second degree reckless endangerment, a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail.

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