didn’t mention that.”
“I didn’t even know about that until I saw the article,”
Curt said, frustration growing in his voice. “Listen,
Henry. I know the rank and file. I know the guys who
work narcotics detail, the guys sweeping the street
corners for dealers, the ones who confiscate this crap, and
even the ones who log it in to evidence. None of them,
let me repeat, none of them, have any idea what the hell
she’s talking about or where she got the info from.”
“Either she pulled enough information from her ass to
make her walk funny for a month, somebody in your department has loose lips, or something is being kept a
pretty big secret from all of us.”
“I don’t know about you, but I think her article is
half bull.”
“And the other half?”
Curt was silent for a moment. I could feel my heart
pounding in my chest. I knew his answer before he said it.
Bull or not, there was a lining of truth in Paulina’s article.
“The other half,” he said, “I’m just praying she’s
wrong about. I grew up in this city in the eighties,
Henry. I had a cousin who got hooked on junk. He stole
two twenties from some junkie’s wallet because he
needed money to cook more of that poison on a spoon.
He ended up taking eight bullets. From a six-shooter.
Which meant the junkie who killed him reloaded and
then shot him two more times. I know what crack did
to this city. I saw it, man. I’m not comparing apples to
oranges, belts to syringes. I’m just saying that if there
is any truth to Cole’s story, and this stuff is already in
the marketplace, it’s a faucet that’s gonna be real tough
to shut off.”
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201
“If this thing is as big as Paulina claims it is,” I said,
“won’t it be easy to track down?”
“You’d think so, but I know a dozen narco officers
who have eyes and ears and informants up the yin yang
with access to all kinds of dope. They know everyone
from the absolute bottom of the totem pole to the people
at the top. And not one of them has heard a single peep
about Darkness.”
“I just don’t see Paulina making this up. I mean, she
presses every button there is, but she’s not an all-out
liar. Even when she torpedoed Jack, everything she
said was true. It was a pretty despicable takedown, but
she wasn’t lying.”
“Listen, Henry, I hear you, but this isn’t my beat. I
can only go by what the guys in Narcotics are telling me.
And if I hear anything I’ll let you know. But right now
there’s nothing.”
“Thanks, Curt. Good luck out there. For your sake, I
hope Paulina had a sudden case of the truthful yips.”
“Truthful yips. Sounds like a good name for a band.”
“Yeah. I’ll let you know when I form it. You can
play bass?”
“Always saw myself as more of a saxophone man. You
know, Charlie Parker. Sure you don’t have a black uncle?”
“Hey, man, you know how my father plays hide-andseek with the truth. It wouldn’t shock me. But as far as I
know I don’t.”
“Gotcha. Take it easy, Henry.”
“Later, Curt.”
I hung up the phone. I noticed Jack had come over, and
was standing next to my desk.
“Was that your buddy Sheffield?”
I nodded, leaned back in my chair and stretched.
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“I don’t get it. Curt knows this stuff, and he said
nobody in the department has heard one word about
this new drug.”
“Is it possible his ear is just a little too far from the juice?”
“It’s possible, but Curt’s been pretty reliable when it
comes to big stories.”
“Well, until we hear otherwise, we have to assume
that the Wicked Witch of the West Side scooped us fair
and square.”
“I don’t think that’s going to make Wallace like us any
more.”
“No. He’ll bitch and moan for a day or two, until we
break something big and Ted Allen at the Dispatch has
to eat a nice big turd sandwich.”
“He has to deal with Paulina every day. That’s gotta
be enough punishment for one man.”
Jack laughed. It felt strange, though, as though he was
laughing more to gauge my reaction than out of actual
emotion. Then he stayed silent for a minute, just thinking.
“So where are we at?” he said. “It seems like our number
one lead got himself a one-way ticket to the big adios.”
“Well, my gut says for certain that Kaiser knew
exactly what I was talking about when I asked him about
718 Enterprises. Of course he was killed before I could
get any deeper.”
“So think about this, sport,” Jack said. “I’m guessing
Kaiser’s demise was not due to a leak in his gas stove.
He was killed. So who benefits from Kaiser being out of
the picture? And why kill him now?”
“It was probably no secret that we were looking at him,
so whoever killed him was worried he would talk.”
“Did he seem like a talker to you?”
“Are you kidding? If he’d given me another thirty
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203
seconds he would have told me what his wife was like
in bed.”
“So someone ices him before he can talk. Who?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s this blond guy the doorman saw
coming at odd hours. He clearly had business with Kaiser
that couldn’t take place during the light of day.”
“Didn’t you say his wife left when he came over?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Mrs. Kaiser left and went to a coffee
shop on the corner. She let this guy and Brett do their
thing, then she’d just come back like she’d gone to the
beauty salon. Nothing strange about her attitude, according to the doorman.”
“So you know who we have to talk to now?” Jack
said.
“Victoria Kaiser. Wonderful. Nothing I need more than
bothering a grieving widow.”
“You’re too mushy, Parker. If I was a grieving widow…”
“You’d be a pretty widow,” I said. Jack ignored me.
“If I was a grieving widow, I’d sure as hell want to find
the bastards who killed my husband.”
“Isn’t that the job of the NYPD?”
“Yeah. And they did a real bang-up job investigating your brother’s death. Since Stephen Gaines is connected to 718—per your estimation—I have a funny
feeling the NYPD might be taking this whole thing a
little lightly.”
“Why would they do that?” I said.
“Easy,” Jack said. “For whatever reason, somebody
over there thinks it’s in their best interests to let this story
slide. And that’s where we come in, little buddy.”
“Okay, Gramps. Let’s see if we can get in touch with
Mrs. Kaiser.”
Jack stood up. I noticed a bulge in his pants pocket.
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“What the hell do you have in there?” I asked, slightly
worried and a little grossed out at the same time.
“This? Just a soda.” He took the can out of his pocket.
“You walk around carrying soda cans in your pants.”
“Just in the office. Need a little sugar rush from
time to time.”
I acted as though that made perfect sense.
“How’s the…are you still on the wagon?” I asked. I
wasn’t sure how Jack would take my asking. He could
have been offended, he could have told me it was none of
my business, and I wasn’t sure if it was. But as long as I
was working with him, as long as I was trusting him, I
needed to know he was all there.
That wasn’t the only reason of course. If I found out Jack
was back on the sauce, to be honest it would have devastated me. I needed to see Jack the way he’d been during his
prime. Even if he’d lost a few miles off his fastball, I needed
to see the Jack O’Donnell who’d earned the reputation of
being one of the best newsmen in the city’s history. Though
I wasn’t sure if I needed it more for Jack’s sake, or for mine.
“Two months,” Jack said. There was sincerity on his
face, and it made me breathe easier.
“I’m glad to hear that, I…”
“It’s not easy,” Jack said. “I’m not going to lie to you,
Henry. You do something every day for almost fifty years,
it’s not like a switch you can just turn off. It’s almost a
part of you. And when you don’t do it—drink, I mean—
it’s like there’s a space that needs to be filled.”
“Hence the soda,” I said.
“Sometimes the space is literal,” he said, patting his
stomach. “Not the exact same, but it helps.”
“Like a nicotine patch.”
“Kind of like that, only that doesn’t rot your teeth.”
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205
“If you need any help,” I said, “physical, emotional…”
“Sexual?” Jack grinned at me.
“I’m not into necrophilia, old man.”
This time Jack closed his eyes when he laughed.
“Come on, Parker, let’s go. Victoria Kaiser is probably
being held by the cops for questioning and protection. I have
a man at One Police Plaza who can put us in touch with her.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said. “I’ll meet you outside. Just
gotta make a quick call.”
“To who?” Jack asked.
“Amanda,” I lied.
“What about?”
“We’re planning a vacation. Just wanted to see if she
booked it yet.”
“That’s nice. You could use a little time away. I’ll be
waiting in the lobby. Don’t take so long that I’ll need
to sit down.”
“I’ll be right there.”
Jack left. When I saw him enter the elevator vestibule,
and the doors closed on him, I picked up my phone. I took
out my cell phone, scrolled down to the number I’d just
recently entered and filed under Ray’s Pizza. Didn’t need
anyone knowing the truth right now.
I dialed the number, and chewed a fingernail as it rang.
Finally a voice answered.
“I recognize the prefix,” Paulina Cole said. “There had
better be a reason somebody’s calling me from the Gazette. ”
“It’s Henry Parker,” I said.
“Oh. Parker. What do you want?”
“What do I want? The article you wrote today,
what’s the deal?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, defiance and
annoyance battling for supremacy in her voice.
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Jason Pinter
“The cops don’t have any idea what you’re talking
about. And nobody has seen this drug. Not to mention you
didn’t even mention it when we spoke.”
“What, I ask a favor of you and suddenly I need to tell
you everything I’m working on?”
“No, but I…”
“I told you there was a quid pro quo.”
“Wait…the guy who threatened your daughter…did
he make you write that story?” I waited for Paulina to
answer. “Hello? You still there?”
“I told you there was a quid pro quo,” Paulina said.
“That’s all you need to know. Goodbye, Parker. Thanks
again.”
She hung up.
I sat there, shaking.
Paulina Cole was no pushover. I’d believed her when
we spoke, but for her to do this kind of favor, to write
a story that might have had no factual basis, it went
beyond morally wrong into ethically wrong. Paulina
was a good reporter; too good sometimes. She might
have had a nose for the tabloidy, for the melodramatic,
but she almost never got her facts wrong. So why the
heck would somebody want her to print that? Why
invent a drug if it didn’t exist? Why falsely quote a cop
if the story was grounded in a lie? For her to print this,
it either meant she’d fabricated a hell of a story with
somebody else’s help…or that the story was true. And
whoever wanted the story written wanted it seen by
millions of people for a reason.
Did that blond guy who killed Brett Kaiser also blackmail Paulina Cole into writing that article? What the hell
did he have to do with this new drug? And if he had
something to do with it, no doubt Brett Kaiser did, too. I
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207
could only hope Victoria Kaiser could shed a little light
on this, because just like the drug, this story felt dangerous as hell and getting darker.
28
Morgan held the metal bar as the train sped uptown. He
was standing next to Theo Goggins, the two of them
carrying briefcases with enough narcotics to last Scarface
until the sequel.
and bright.
“You were right about the tie,” Morgan said. “It works.”
“You think I’d lie about something as important as
that? I started off making cold calls. First time I got a fish
to bite on a stock, I was wearing a blue tie. First time I
closed an account—blue tie.”
“First time you sold stuff that would get you jail time.”
Theo smiled. “Blue tie. But I ain’t never going to jail.
Only way I go to jail is if you rat on me, and I ain’t never
going to give you cause to do that. So you make up a
story, it’s your ass they find broken into itty-bitty pieces
floating in the East River.”
“Same to you, my friend.”
“See,” Theo said, smiling, “we’re going to get along
just fine.”
Morgan’s palms were sweaty. His legs shook from
time to time, as he waited for somebody to come up to
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209
him—maybe a cop or one of those transit workers—grab
him by the collar, rip open the briefcase spilling pills and
dope all over the dirty car floor.
But that didn’t happen.
Nobody batted an eye at them.
It was about eight-thirty in the morning, and Morgan
and Theo were on
their way to meet their first customer
of the day. Morgan wondered who ordered drugs along
with their morning cup of joe, but he figured there were
enough people in this city who either worked from home
or were unemployed that there was a 24/7 market for
their wares.
Theo was whistling something softly. Morgan couldn’t
tell what it was, but he figured trying to guess would
keep his mind off the legal ramifications of being caught
with his goods.
Guessing the tune was impossible. First of all, Theo
didn’t seem like a particularly good whistler. Instead
of a clean, high-pitched noise coming from his lips, it
was more like a low rattle punctuated by occasional
bursts of spit.
Theo paused to wipe his mouth, then he said to Morgan,
“You need something?” Morgan hadn’t realized that he’d
likely been staring at his partner for nearly five minutes.
“Just wondered what you’re whistling,” he said.
“A little Jay-Z.”
“Cool.”
Theo resumed his “whistling.” Morgan held the rails,
his mind beginning to wander.
“So what’s your story?” Theo said, snapping Morgan out of it.
“My story?”
“Yeah. How’d you end up in the basement of some
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Jason Pinter
nightclub loading up on this stuff. Not exactly the kind
of job you find on Monster.com.”
“I got laid off,” Morgan said. “A few months ago.”
“How much you owe?”
“Excuse me?”
“Come on,” Theo said, smiling. “You wouldn’t be
here if you didn’t have debts pouring out your eyeballs.
So how much?”
“In total?”
“No, itemize it for me, asshole.”
Morgan smiled back. He liked Theo.
“All in all? A little over nine hundred thousand.”
Theo whistled. For whatever reason, this time the
sound came through clean.
“Let me guess, most of that tied up in your pad.”
“Most of it. Still have almost a million on my mortgage.”
“You try to sell it?”
“Yeah. No takers. What about you?”
“Same shit. Only I got laid off a year ago.”
“How much do you owe?” Morgan asked.
“Three million.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Uh-uh,” Theo said. “I bought up half a dozen properties in the city. Made the down payments, figured I could
rent them out, have other people pay my carrying costs
and then I’d just sell them down the road and make a