CHAPTER 6
Michael Reiter: March 2005
sea calms, human cargo
fickers aim the bows of the
order their passengers to
Most of the passengers
who stake all they have or
to time, Palm Beach cops
Things get busier dur
it, the season. It's when
ties and balls, shop, and
Worth Avenue. The popu
who work under Chief R
ers, and snotty skateboar
tic disturbances. Chokin
stuff, but there's always
women who work for Rei
Chief Reiter's proud (
knows, they're lucky to ha
for the job. If anything, h
the John F. Kennedy Sch
terrorist training at Quan
up often at cocktail partie
hijackers lived in Palm B
local airstrips. A few, incl
had been regulars at 251
There they had regaled
made-up stories about the
But 251 Sunrise is shu
2004, after an avalanche of
Beach is as quiet and calm
For the moment.
C
hief Reiter looks more like a bank president than a cop.
He's well built, with an air of formality and discretion. But
he's got twenty-four years on the job. Decades earlier, he
was a campus police officer in Pittsburgh. Then he rose, steadily,
through the ranks in Palm Beach, moving up from patrol officer
to detective, working vice, narcotics, and organized crime, then
becoming a sergeant, captain, major, and assistant chief-a job
he held for three years-before becoming chief of police. Reiter
is what you'd call seasoned, although chief of police in Palm
Beach is a job that calls upon his political skills as much as his
street smarts.
Then again, from time to time, things do happen.
Once in a blue moon there are murders-though these are
so rare that they tend to be remembered for decades.
Sometimes there are hurricanes to contend with, and, when the
18