Parker 05 - The Darkness (3 page)

same. Or you can lose your balance and be blown away

like a crumpled newspaper. Some people lean into the

wind and try to walk faster. They press ahead, moving at

greater speeds than the rest of us. But with greater reward

comes greater risk, and the more you lean the faster you

can lost your balance and be blown away.

My brother fell. My idol and mentor, Jack O'Donnell,

fell. I was still leaning into the wind, sometimes hard

enough to lose my balance. I'd lived and worked in this

gusty city for several years now, and thought I was used

to it. But time and time again, the city showed me just

how strong the winds could be.

I got to the office of the
New York Gazette
at eight

o'clock sharp, half an hour before I was supposed to be

there, and even fifteen minutes before I'd said I'd be

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Jason Pinter

there. To put it mildly, this was the most excited I'd been

about the job in a long time.

The last few weeks had been a maelstrom of violence

and secrets. I'd recently learned that my father had had

an affair thirty years ago, and that affair resulted in the

birth of a boy named Stephen Gaines. My brother.

I didn't learn about Stephen until just a few weeks ago,

when he showed up out of nowhere at the offices of the

New York Gazette,
where I worked as a reporter. Gaines

was stoned and scared out of his mind that night, and for

that reason I didn't give him a chance to tell his story. I

didn't see the man up close until a few hours later. After

I learned he'd been shot to death in his own apartment.

When I saw him next, he was lying on a slab in the

morgue.

Not what you'd call the most enjoyable family reunion.

I'd pieced the truth together in a large part spurred on

by a book written by Jack O'Donnell called
Through the

Darkness.
In that book, he discussed the murder of a lowly

drug dealer named Butch Willingham who was possibly

murdered by an elusive drug kingpin nicknamed the Fury.

Yet the truth wasn't whole. If the Fury did exist, then

something big was on the horizon. Butch Willingham's

murder was one of a spate of drug-related murders, and

if history did repeat itself, that meant Stephen's murder

was merely the beginning.

Coming to grips with the life and death of the brother

I'd never known was difficult, if not impossible. It was

something I was still struggling with. Eventually we

tracked down the man who killed him, a low-level drug

dealer who seemed to want Gaines dead to open up the door

for his own upward mobility in the New York drug trade.

But something about it still didn't sit right. It was too

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21

neat, too clean. Too many questions still lingered, an

open wound that wouldn't close.

And leave it to Jack O'Donnell to throw a crowbar

into the wound.

I was wearing a suit, the same one I'd worn on my very

first day in the office several years ago. I remembered the

day clearly. Meeting Wallace Langston, the paper's editor

in chief, being led to my desk where I'd write the stories

I was born to write. Seeing the man, Jack O'Donnell, in

person for the first time.

The man was a legend of the New York newsroom, as

synonymous with this city as any one of its towering

monuments. But every monument has cracks, ignored

by those who prefer to see their gods as unfailing, monuments pristine in their foundations and men pure in their

humanity. Yet while Jack raised the bar for journalism,

his cracks had begun to show themselves not just to me,

but to millions of people.

We all knew that Jack drank. But when you told people

Jack drank, you raised your eyebrows and enunciated the

word
drank
like it was hepatitis. Jack O'Donnell
drank.

Three-martini lunches might have fallen out of fashion, but Jack was trying to keep the tradition going almost

singlehandedly. And who else would expose the cracks

in the foundation but someone who resided as low to the

ground as possible.

Paulina Cole used to work with Jack at the
Gazette.
A

few months ago, she penned a hatchet job to end all hatchet

jobs, exposing Jack's drinking problem on the front page in

our rival paper, the
NewYork Dispatch.
It was a colossal embarrassment to his reputation, personally and professionally.

Then Jack disappeared.

Whether he was in rehab or lying in the gutter some-22

Jason Pinter

where, I figured the man needed time to figure out if he

was going to be swallowed whole by his demons, or if he

still had the strength to fight them off. My answer came,

surprisingly, when I needed him the most.

After I learned the truth about Stephen's killer, Jack

found me at my home just as my girlfriend, Amanda, and

I were packing up. He told me he'd needed a "dialysis of

the soul." He looked good. Healthy. And raring to go to

answer the questions that Stephen's murder just touched

upon.

Anyway, that's what I was doing here early in the

morning. I wanted to get here before him. Though we'd

worked in the same offices for several years, I'd never had

the chance to work side by side with Jack. I was eager to

prove what I'd learned, eager to prove that there was

someone waiting in the wings to carry on the traditions

he'd started. And what better way to show I was ready

than by beating the man to his desk on his first day back

in the office?

So when I got off on the ninth floor, pushed through

the glass doors to the newsroom, rounded the corner to

the sea of news desks, I was shocked to see Jack O'Donnell surrounded by our colleagues, looking like a kid at

his own birthday party.

He was sitting on his desk, feet on his desk chair,

speaking loudly and buoyantly while the other reporters

and editors laughed and slapped him on the back. I hadn't

seen Jack with this much energy since, well, ever. And

any frustration I felt in getting here late disappeared when

I saw the smile on the old man's face.

It was like a returning war hero being embraced by his

countrymen. While Jack was gone, one of the things I

wished I understood better was the newsroom's opinion

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23

of him. While I always held his professional career in the

highest regard, there were no doubt others who looked at

his departure as something of an embarrassment. Any

time a paper's reporter ends up in the headlines instead

of below them, it was considered an affront to the integrity of the establishment. The
New York Times
went

through it with Jayson Blair, and the
Gazette
had gone

through it twice in the last several years: the exposure of

Jack's alcoholism by Paulina Cole at the
Dispatch,
and

when I was accused of murder. And while the truth about

my situation eventually came to light, the harsh reality

was that every word in Paulina's story was true. Granted

she handled it with the class and dignity of a five-dollar

hooker, but her words touched a nerve because they cut

deep.

The stain on my reputation had begun to disappear

over time. I didn't know if Jack's ever would.

"Henry!" Jack's voice boomed over the newsroom.

He was waving me over, the reporters around his desk

looking in my direction expectantly. I smiled, big and

wide, and walked over.

"Jack," I said, "how's the first day back?"

"Coffee still sucks, elevator's still slow, and the receptionist still doesn't know my name. Just another day at

the office, and I'm loving it."

He was wearing a suit and tie that both looked new.

His beard, usually shaggy, was neat, the gray more

evenly spread. The bags beneath his eyes looked to have

dissolved, and his movements were sharper, livelier. It

was great to see him like this, and though my smile was

wide on the outside, it was nothing compared to how I

felt inside.

Jonas Levinson, the paper's science editor, said, "We

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Jason Pinter

didn't know when we'd see you again, old boy. No note,

no forwarding address. Who are you, my ex-wife?"

"I guess when you have enough of them," Jack said,

"you start to inherit their best qualities." The group laughed.

"Coffee tastes a whole lot better with a sprinkle of

Beam in there," Frank Rourke said. "I got a bottle at my

desk, Jack. Stop by if you need a taste."

The smile disappeared from Jack's face. "Hey, Frank?"

"Hey, Jack-O?"

"Why don't you go back to your desk and slam a

drawer on your head a few times."

Rourke seemed taken aback. "Christ, it was just a joke,

O'Donnell."

"Just leave. Amazingly you've got less tact than brains,

and that's not an easy feat. Go on,
git.
"

Rourke walked away, fuming. Jack's face warmed

again, then he turned to me. Speaking to the rest of the crew,

he said, "Fellas, would you give me and Henry a minute?"

They all gave Jack a firm handshake, a pat on the back,

a hug or two. I could tell Jack hadn't been hugged a

whole lot. He wasn't sure where to place his hands. Once

the crowd had thinned, he motioned for me to pull up a

chair. I grabbed one from an empty desk a few rows away

and pulled it into his cube. "Sit down," he said. I obliged.

"It's great to have you back," I said. "I wasn't sure--"

"You're late," Jack said. I checked my watch.

"It's not even ten past eight. You told me to be here at

eight-thirty."

"If a press conference is called for four and you show

up at three-thirty, you'll be sitting in the back row with

the reporters from the high school newspapers."

"I get your point," I said.

Jack continued. "So far, you've made it by on talent

The Darkness

25

and luck. You want to be great at this job, you need to add

a spoonful of brains. With the story we're going to be

chasing, there's no half an hour early. Murderers don't

want for you to be on time. Drug dealers don't use personal data organizers. When you catch people off guard,

that's when the truth comes out. Never give someone the

time to make up a lie."

"I know how important this is," I said. "I know that

what my brother was killed for goes higher than the

assholes who pulled the trigger."

Jack stared at me. "You don't know anything, Henry.

You never go into a story 'knowing' anything. A good

reporter is open to every possibility. If you have on

blinders, you miss the bigger picture. You might think

there's a massive conspiracy, but then you look for facts

to support your thesis. You may be right about Gaines.

But you don't know anything yet. So let the picture paint

itself for you."

"Gaines was killed because somebody thought bumping

him off was the quickest route to money and power," I said.

"And they wouldn't have thought that without a reason."

"You said there was a connection between Gaines and

some company, right?"

"718 Enterprises," I replied. "I think it's a shell corporation. I saw a battalion of drug dealers leaving the

company's midtown headquarters, but I didn't find out

what it is or who runs it. Plus my buddy at the NYPD,

Curt Sheffield, told me that five people connected to 718

have been killed over the last few months. 718 is hiding

something major, and for some reason its employees have

shorter shelf lives than a chicken at KFC. So you think

we should start by looking into 718?"

Jack put his thumb to his lip, tapped it as he thought.

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Jason Pinter

Then he shook his head. "You don't get a story by meeting it head-on. You need to confront the big dogs with

facts, not accusations. We need to poke around. Find out

who and what exists at the peripherals. We..."

Just then my cell phone rang. I noticed that the red

message light was blinking at the voice mail on my desk.

Whoever was calling had tried to reach me at the office

and was now calling my cell.

My first thought was Amanda, but she was likely on

her way to the office. I took the phone from my pocket;

the number on the caller ID made my stomach lurch.

There's no way he'd be calling this early in the morning

unless something had happened. Something bad.

I answered the phone. "Curt?" I said.

"Henry," Curt Sheffield said. Curt was an officer with

the NYPD. A good buddy and dedicated cop. He'd helped

me with numerous cases over the last few years, often

giving me scoops ahead of other papers because he knew

I'd do the right thing with them. A lot of other news outlets,

not that I'd name names, would takes quotes out of context,

make officers who stuck their necks out look bad.

The thing you learned in the news business was that