“That’s it.”
There was a knock at the door behind Ramos. She
went and opened it. A man stood there. He was wearing
a suit, brown hair neatly combed. And he was holding a
legal pad and pen.
“Leonard, come in,” she said. “Meet Henry Parker.”
“Mr. Parker, it’s a pleasure.” He didn’t offer a hand.
Just as well.
“Leonard Reeves,” I said. He looked at Ramos with
evident discomfort.
“How much does he know?”
Eve chuckled softly. “Apparently more than I thought.”
“Leonard Reeves,” I said again. “Graduated from
Princeton in 1993. Former executive at Morgan Stanley,
and liaison to the Department of Finance.”
I watched as Reeves’s eyes widened, rage drumming
up inside of him.
“How do you—”
“Which leads me to this question,” I said. “How much
is Eve Ramos paying you to sell out our government?”
Now it was Ramos who couldn’t contain herself,
laughing hysterically. Reeves looked at her. His rage
seemed to subside as he saw how unperturbed she was by
my knowledge.
“Henry, you have this all wrong,” she said. “We’re not
selling out the government. Hell, we’re working for them.”
48
“Working for them,” I said. “You mean the city is
making money off of you. That’s why I found a money
order made out to Morgan Isaacs for fifty grand from
Leonard Reeves. Reeves works for 718. You set your
drug cartel up as a legit business, and the government is
making millions of dollars in taxes off of dead people and
blood money.”
“Millions right now, maybe. Soon it’ll be hundreds of
millions,” Ramos said. “And once the Darkness spreads
to other metropolitan areas—Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago—it’ll be in the billions.”
“How can they let this happen?” I said. “Don’t they
know these drugs are killing people? Don’t they know
who you are?”
“Know who I am?” Eve said. “Not only do they know
who I am…they’re the reason I’m here.”
“Panama,” I said. “The Hard Chargers—you were
one of them?”
“Yes and no. I certainly did my share of hell-raising
down there. Nothing helps sell a war like violence against
our troops. But those bastards weren’t supposed to kill
me. And it’s their fault Chester died.”
350
Jason Pinter
“Hollinsworth said you found a way to synthesize
Darkness,” I said. “So why would the government still
work with you if you stole this from Noriega?”
“Oh, they didn’t know,” she said. “In fact, they trusted
me so much that when the CIA-backed cartels in the
eighties got out of hand, guess who they put in charge to
oversee things?”
“That’s why you’re the Fury,” I said. “They installed
you as a watchdog because their money was at stake. With
you there, they could make sure the money was going to
fund the Contras.”
“Yeah, but that stopped being fun after a while. Why
be a watchdog when you can be the top dog? Those
cartels made billions, but the leadership had more balls
than they had brains. They were more than happy to let
someone take over who could handle distribution on a nationwide basis. Unfortunately word got out and that
reporter Webb found out about it. The CIA tried to pull
the plug. But when you’re running a covert operation,
pulling the plug doesn’t mean ending things so much as
pretending they never happened.”
I said, “So they left you in charge of the largest drug
cartel in North America.”
“Your tax dollars at work. And Mr. Reeves here was
kind enough to set up a deal where not only could we work
in peace, but we’d benefit the city of New York as well.
Thousands of federal employees laid off due to a lack of
funds, and that’s exactly what we’re giving them back.”
“Makhoulian,” I said. “He was the mole in the NYPD.
He knew everything we were doing.”
“More or less. I am a little surprised by how persistent
you are, Henry.”
“So why this?” I said. “Why now?”
The Darkness
351
“Well, the truth is we weren’t able to perfect the
mixture until recently. But if you believe in fate—like I
do—then everything came together for a reason. Look at
this city, Henry. Its infrastructure is crumbling. It’s
billions of dollars in debt. Millions of people have lost
everything, and the people who pump the most money
into this economy—the rich—are losing their jobs. The
pipes have been rotting for years. With the Darkness, I
managed to build the greatest cherry bomb the city has
ever seen, and dropping it into those pipes now will cause
the whole system to come crashing down. Cities burn
from the ground up, not the top down.”
“All because you think you were sent to die in Panama.
This isn’t about money. It’s about payback.”
“Call it what you want. Truth is, I’m doing this city a
favor. New York will have a chance to bring itself back
from the wreckage. Twenty years ago this city teetered
on the edge, and it was brought back. When a city comes
so close for a second time, it needs a little push. That’s
where I come in.”
“No matter how many people die in the process.”
“I read somewhere that over a hundred billion people
have died since the earth was created. Am I really
supposed to shed a tear for a few more?”
“You’re settling a grudge,” I said. “You feel you were
sent to die, so you’re taking revenge.”
“Not to mention a handsome profit,” she said. “If
there is a better feeling than seeing the same fat, stupid
men who sent you to die line your pockets, I don’t know
what it is.”
Reeves came over and placed the pad and pen in front
of me. Then he stepped back and folded his arms behind
his back. I could tell he wasn’t happy about this, wasn’t
352
Jason Pinter
happy I knew the depth of his involvement. But Ramos
kept him fed. And that was good enough.
“You write your article, including the facts I’ve told
you. Once it is written, Leonard and I will go over it to make
sure it doesn’t contain anything that we don’t approve of.
After that we will e-mail it to your boss, Mr. Langston.”
“And then what?”
“And when it runs, we can assure you that Amanda
Davies will live a long, happy life. Well, a long life at least.”
“And me?”
“Having saved a life, you can go to your grave with
the nobility many men do not.”
“And you get to promote the Darkness even more.”
“The New York Dispatch is only read by half the city,”
she said. “With your paper we’ll get the other half, too.”
I eyed the pen, wondering if there was a way I could
use it. Not that I’d been trained in any Bourne-esque dojo
where they taught you how to kill two people with a
single pen.
“Mr. Reeves here will watch you. I don’t expect your
finest work, Henry. Time is of the essence.”
I didn’t know what to do. Amanda’s life versus thousands of people who would read about this drug and be
tempted to buy it. I pictured Amanda, sitting at home, while
the city burned around her. Then I pictured her grieving at
my funeral, not knowing I’d given my life for her.
What the hell could I do?
Before I could do or say anything, there was another
knock at the door behind Eve Ramos. It startled her very
briefly, and I took a step forward.
She opened it, and standing there was Rex Malloy.
“Eve,” he said. “We’ve got a problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
The Darkness
353
“Sheffield and Parker,” he said. “They didn’t come
alone.”
Ramos stood there, unsure what to make of what
Malloy had said. We had come alone. What the hell was
Malloy talking about?
Suddenly I heard a loud noise come from outside the
compound. A second explosion, then a third, rattling the
floor, reverberating. Somebody was shooting at the warehouse from outside. Eve Ramos’s eyes narrowed as she
stared at me. I had no answers.
They didn’t come alone.
Had somebody followed us?
“Get up, Parker,” Ramos said, her voice gone to steel.
She marched over and grabbed me by the hair, pulling me
up. I stood, wrenched away.
“Get off of me.”
Then I realized where the gunfire had come from. We
weren’t being shot at from outside. Somebody inside the
compound was firing at someone outside.
Then it dawned on me.
We had been followed. By Jack O’Donnell.
49
The first volley of gunfire drove them to dive behind the
police cars, bullets strafing the metal, punching quartersized holes in every car. Jack O’Donnell felt a pain in his
arm as he hit the ground, dirt kicking up around him.
He was surrounded by two dozen of New York’s finest,
and now that the level of violence had escalated there was
sure to be SWAT and helicopter backup. But for now it
was just this ragged old journalist and a bunch of cops
who’d walked into a buzz saw.
“Is this normal?” Jack shouted when the gunfire stopped.
Chief of Department Louis Carruthers, his back
pressed up against a blue-and-white, shook his head. “Not
in the least. It only means one thing, so you’d better keep
your head down.”
“What’s that?”
“It means they’re not planning to be arrested.”
Jack slowly picked himself, peeked over the hood of
a car, just in time for another round to rip up the car and
force him back to the ground.
His heart was beating a million miles a minute, but
something besides fear coursed through the old lion.
Neither Henry or Curt knew Jack had followed them all
The Darkness
355
the way from Parker’s apartment, and it gave Jack a slight
bit of pride to know he still had a little left in the old oil
can. But when he saw the two men force Henry and Curt
to follow them at gunpoint, he knew the time for hideand-seek was over.
It was less than ten minutes before the cavalry arrived,
and it took less than one to tear open the gated entrance and
force themselves inside. Jack didn’t know what to expect,
but when he saw the massive warehouse and the sentry
guards, the fence barricading the area from both trespassers
and onlookers, he had a feeling they’d stumbled onto the
very heart of where the Darkness was produced.
“Do we just wait until they run out of bullets then?”
Jack yelled above the storm.
Carruthers looked at him and shook his head.
Then he yelled to the rest of the cops perched outside,
“There are two innocents in there, including one of our
own. Let’s get them the hell out of there!”
Then a barrage of gunfire strafed the outside of the
warehouse, shattering glass, shredding brick, smoke and
dust pouring from everywhere.
Jack covered his ears, felt dirt and gravel raining down
around him, stinging his face and neck. And below the pain
in his arm, the rapid pace of his heart that scared the hell
out of him, Jack had a feeling this was just the beginning.
50
When the gunfire first erupted, Eve Ramos went into
the stairwell to find out what was going on. I could see
her and Rex Malloy talking. Malloy was animated, pointing somewhere I couldn’t see, gesturing like mad as
Ramos stood there impassively, processing it all. Behind
them, still in the room with me, was Leonard Reeves.
And unlike his two comrades, Reeves’s eyes betrayed
him. He looked nervous, the kind of man who might
dish out violence but never expected it to come back to
him.
Whatever Rex Malloy was saying, it was frightening
Leonard Reeves something bad.
While they were preoccupied, I picked up the pen and
quietly walked over to where Reeves was standing. He
fat but without much discernible muscle definition.
Sometimes you could take one look at a person, the way
they carried themselves, and know how brave they were.
What kind of fight they would put up. In Leonard Reeves,
I got the sense of a man who talked a big game but once
cornered, would piss his pants faster than an eight-yearold with a tiny bladder.
The Darkness
357
So with little time to decide my course of action, I took
a chance that could lead either to my freedom, or my death.
Gripping the pen in my fist, the point sticking out two
inches, I wrapped my left arm around the front of
Reeves’s neck and jammed the pen right under his jawline
on his carotid artery, hard enough that I felt the tip
threaten to pierce skin. Reeves was surprised and struggled, crying out, but I whispered into his ear, “Move once
more and you’ll see your blood all over Malloy’s nice
blond hair.”
Reeves relaxed. His hand was still on the arm that
held his neck in place, but there was no strength in it.
I could feel the gun against my hip, and holding the
pen I quickly grabbed it and swapped the writing utensil
for the pistol. Not a bad choice. I flicked the safety off.
I’d only held a gun once before, and even then it was out
of self-defense. I didn’t want to fire it.
Right now, though, I was certain that if need be I would
use it. I wasn’t sure who was more frightened: me
knowing I could be forced to end a man’s life, or Reeves
knowing his life was in the hands of a man who had
nothing to lose.
I led Reeves into the stairwell where
Ramos and
Malloy were standing. Windows opened onto the front of
the compound, but Ramos and Malloy were blocking my
view. I couldn’t see who or what was out there. Whoever
it was clearly had their attention.
Eve Ramos turned around. Rex Malloy did as well.
They both stared at me, Malloy seeming more pissed off
while Ramos smiled at me like I’d just built a nice big
house of cards.
“Take me to Sheffield,” I said. “As soon as we’re outside, I let Reeves go. If not, he’s a dead man.”
358
Jason Pinter
“Henry,” Ramos said, cocking her head to the side, that
smile still spread on her face. “I give you credit for
keeping your balls intact. But you have gravely overestimated Mr. Reeves’s worth to me. Especially in light of
his less than stellar reflexes.”
With that, Eve Ramos pulled a gun from her waistband
and put a bullet right in Leonard Reeves’s head.
He dropped to the floor, his body becoming dead
weight in less than a second. I felt sticky blood on my
hands. I looked at Ramos. She seemed oddly disappointed.
“Sometimes,” she said, “you don’t have time to paint
a picture.”
I held Reeves’s gun out, pointed it at Ramos.
“Let us out of here,” I said.
“Or what? You shoot me and end up looking like something the butcher threw away? Put the gun down, Henry,
before you get hurt.”
And just like that, the window behind Ramos shattered, gunfire riddling the stairwell. Sparks cascaded all
around us at the bullets ricocheted off the metal bars.
Whoever was outside was now firing back.
We all ducked, covering our heads as glass came
pouring down around us. Ramos knelt on the floor below
the window, her back against the wall. She held a hand
up to her cheek. It came away slick with blood where
she’d been cut by an errant shard. Malloy was on his
stomach, and crawled over to see if she was all right. And
right there I saw my one chance to live.
While they were distracted, I rushed forward and shoved
Malloy as hard as I could. His body, already off balance,
went toppling down the stairs. He landed with a thud two
floors below, screaming in pain and clutching his leg.
Before Ramos had a chance to recover, I leaped back
The Darkness
359
into the stairwell and began to climb. They’d taken Curt
somewhere upstairs, and I could only hope to find him
before the entire warehouse was shredded.