Detective Sevay Makhoulian, wearing a light brown
jacket that fluttered in the wind, nodded, gesturing across
the front seat toward my window.
338
Jason Pinter
We turned around to find another man there. This one
I’d never met before, but I knew him right away. He was
in his early forties, with wavy blond hair and an ear that
looked like a bad science experiment.
It was Rex Malloy, and he was smiling as he aimed a
gun at my head.
47
Rex Malloy opened up the backseat door and slid in,
keeping his gun trained on the back of Curt’s head. Detective Makhoulian was walking in front of us, leading
us toward the path that the Sam’s fish truck had pulled
into. I now knew that Makhoulian had tipped them off
about our meeting with Hollinsworth. Curt had trusted
him. And so had I.
“Weapon, please,” Malloy said to Curt.
“I’m not packing.”
“And I’m Tiger Woods. Weapon. Please.”
I closed my eyes as I felt the muzzle of the gun pressed
against my head. Curt reached down and unstrapped a
gun from his ankle, then handed it over.
“Thank you,” Malloy said. “Was that so hard?”
I could see Malloy through the rearview mirror. His
gun was held level, steady, and there was even the slightest hint of a grin on his face.
Curt looked straight ahead. He was quiet, but I could
sense that he was seething inside. As a cop, I could imagine it was a massive blow to your ego to be ambushed like
this. But it wasn’t Curt’s fault. At least now we knew who
the mole was inside the NYPD. And it was the very man
who’d helped “investigate” my brother’s murder.
340
Jason Pinter
“How long has Makhoulian been working for you?” I
asked. Up ahead we approached a gate, which opened for
us.
Malloy tilted his head just slightly. “Now come on,
Henry. There’ll be plenty of time to ask questions. And
please call him ‘Detective.’”
“He’s no more a detective than you are a soldier,” I spat.
Malloy squinted his eyes just slightly, and the hint of
a grin became a full-blown smile.
“You know, I wasn’t sure how much Bill Hollinsworth was able to get out before we quieted that rat,”
Malloy said.
“He told us everything,” I said. “I know about Panama,
about the Hard Chargers. I know that your brother was
killed and you’ve decided to emulate him in some sick
game, you whack job.”
“Emulate?” Malloy said. “My friend, I am a living
tribute to my brother.”
“Shame you didn’t both get plugged over there,” Curt
said. “Save us all a lot of time.”
“Even if I did,” Malloy said, “it wouldn’t have changed
anything except my post-military career. You two just
happened to be caught up in the current, and lucky enough
for you, you’ll actually get to know the truth before you
die. Well, at least all the truth that’s fit to print.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” I said.
“Just sit tight,” Malloy said. “We’re almost there.”
I followed Makhoulian down a long dirt road, both
sides bracketed by fencing topped with razor wire. The
forest was thick behind the fence, blocking our path from
view. The road snaked and twisted for over a mile, before
it opened into a large open field, surrounded by more
fencing and still closed off from the rest of the world.
The Darkness
341
There was a large brown warehouse in the middle,
some sort of facility. As we approached the facility, two
men carrying machine guns came out to meet us. They
stopped on either side of the car and waited.
“Get out,” Malloy said.
“Or what?” Curt replied.
“Or I’ll kill your friend Parker. And if Parker doesn’t
get out, I’ll kill you. And if you both refuse to get out, I’ll
kill every member of your family.”
Hatred burning through me, I opened the door and
stepped out. Curt did the same.
As we stepped out, I was shoved up against the car and
searched by the man with the machine gun. The man on
the other side did the same to Curt.
From me they confiscated a Bic pen, and from Curt a
Swiss army knife that was attached to his key chain. Then
they took the whole key chain as well.
I was sweating terribly, my mind and heart racing. As I
stood back up, I was finally able to get a full glimpse of our
surroundings. Parked around the side of the warehouse
was the fish truck, the rear backed in to what looked like a
loading dock. And if there was a loading dock here, I had
no doubt that this was where they shipped the Darkness.
“Come on,” Malloy said, “she’s waiting for you.”
“Who the hell is waiting for us?” Curt said. Then he
turned to Detective Makhoulian. “And you, you fucking
rat. If I don’t leave here alive, I swear to God you’re coming with me.”
Makhoulian just stood there and said, “I’m sorry,
Curtis. You’re a good man, but you’re out of your league.”
“What the hell does that mean? And who is this ‘she’
you’re talking about?”
“Eve Ramos,” I said. “She was one of the survivors of
342
Jason Pinter
the attack in Panama. She’s the Fury.” Curt looked at me,
confused, then his eyes widened as the totality of our situation sank in. “She’s the one who wanted my brother killed.”
“Henry,” he said.
“I know.”
Malloy said, “Follow me.”
As if we’d had second thoughts, the two gunmen proceeded to follow us as Malloy led us up to the warehouse. He entered a code on a side door, opened it and
ushered us in.
We were in a long, narrow stairwell, painted a dull gray.
Cameras were positioned at several spots at every landing.
Malloy walked in front of us, taking us up two flights of
stairs before we stopped in front of a door with another
keypad. I counted three cameras, red lights glowing steadily.
“You come with me,” Malloy said, looking at Curt.
“You’re staying here.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Curt said.
Malloy ripped the gun from his waistband and jammed
it under Curt’s jaw, hard enough to make the man wince.
“You’re going to come with me, right now. ”
Malloy signaled to the two gunmen, and they kept
their muzzles trained on me as Malloy led Curt somewhere upstairs. When he was out of sight, one of the men
turned to me and said, “You’re going to wait in here.”
He jabbed a code in with a calloused finger, and when
the LED light turned green he pushed it open.
To my surprise, the door opened into a medium-sized
conference room, complete with varnished wood table
and comfortable leather chairs. There was even a speakerphone hooked up and sitting on the middle of the table,
like a cadre of suits was about to walk throu
gh the door
and talk shop while scarfing down bagels and coffee.
The Darkness
343
“What the hell…” I was able to say before I was
pushed inside, the door slamming shut behind me.
The first thing I did when the door clicked shut was
run to the table and turn on the speakerphone. I wasn’t
shocked to find that there was no dial tone.
“Shit!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. It wasn’t quite
a substitute for “Help” but nobody could hear me anyway.
I walked around the room, looking for anything I could
use. There was nothing. I debated unscrewing one of the
wheels from the chairs to brandish as a weapon, but in a
warehouse filled with people armed to the gills it was
more apt to get me killed quicker.
They wanted me here for a reason, or they would have
killed me already. Besides, this room was too pretty to
commit murder in.
At least, that’s what I thought until I saw the light red
stain on the carpet by the door I’d come in through. It had
clearly been scrubbed numerous times, but damned if
blood wasn’t just too difficult a liquid to get out.
“His name was Jeremy Robertson,” a voice said. “And
he didn’t listen.”
I whirled around to find a woman standing at the other
end of the room. From the lines and age in her face I made
her out to be in her early to mid-forties, but the tone and
muscle definition was striking beneath her black tank
top. She had long black hair that I could see spread out
behind her waist and her green eyes looked at me with a
strange kind of calmness that would have given me chills
if I wasn’t scared to death.
“Jeremy killed himself,” she said. “We only bring in
men who have something to lose. Unfortunately, as we
learned later, Jeremy had nothing.”
“Eve Ramos,” I said. “You’re the Fury.”
344
Jason Pinter
Ramos laughed, her voice high-pitched, full of delight.
“The Fury,” she said. “I always found such enjoyment in
that name. And to think how many people trembled at the
very sound of a person who might not even exist. I
suppose it works the same way with Satan and even Jesus.
Beholden to deities we will never know exist until the day
we die.” Eve Ramos looked up at the ceiling. “I bet
Jeremy Robertson knows whether there is a devil.”
“You manufacture this poison,” I said. “I’m pretty sure
that if there is a devil, that puts you on an even keel with
him.”
“Oh, Mr. Parker,” Eve said as she crossed the room to
where I was standing. Then, moving faster than I knew
possible, she had gripped my throat in her hand and said,
“Who’s to say the devil is a man?”
She then pushed me backward. I coughed once, but
stared her down.
“You killed my brother,” I said. “Just like you’re responsible for about a dozen more deaths from this drug.”
“A dozen?” Ramos said. “Henry, you don’t know the
half of it.”
“So what do you want?” I said. “And where’s my
friend?”
“Officer Sheffield is fine,” she said. “Unfortunately, as
a police officer, we cannot simply dispose of your friend
until we can be certain it is done in a way that is, shall
we say, less than incriminating.”
“And me? Why am I here?”
“Henry, you came to us, remember?”
“Why am I alive?”
“You’re alive because you have use to me. Before you
die, you have a chance to do one last noble deed. And then
when the time comes to meet your maker, you can be sure
it will be the right one.”
The Darkness
345
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Please,” Ramos said. “Sit.”
I didn’t move.
“Fine. You’ll be sitting enough anyway.” She went to
the head of the table, pulled out a leather chair and lay
back, propping her feet up on the table. She was wearing
dark boots, dirty and worn. This was not a woman who
preferred high heels. “You are a newspaperman. I take it
you know much about our product from the reporting of
Ms. Paulina Cole.”
“I read her article,” I said. “And I know how you got
her to write it.”
“See,” she said, smiling. “I knew you were a bright
young man. There’s no way Ms. Cole could have had
access to that information without anybody else knowing
about it. Yes, we fed it to Ms. Cole. And now you are
going to write another article for your newspaper. And
once that is done, you can leave this world in peace,
knowing you’ve kept your loved ones from harm’s way.”
“My loved ones?”
Eve took her feet down, leaned forward. “You came
to my attention right after your brother, Mr. Gaines, was
killed. How fortunate for us that another man was accused
of his murder, that was an unexpected bonus. But when
you figured out who pulled the trigger, we needed a way
to keep you in check. It is part of my job to learn about
people. Their families, backgrounds, careers, loved ones.
I know you have barely seen your parents in ten years. I
know you have little family or friends. But you do have
a woman who holds your heart. So piercing her would
pierce you.” She smiled. “So to speak.”
“My brother,” I said. “You were behind it. You killed
him.”
346
Jason Pinter
“Guilty,” she said. “When you run an organization, the
buck stops with you. When your brother learned about our
plans to diversify our product, he objected. In my line of
business you cannot have employees questioning decisions, or threatening to divulge company secrets. He came
to you, and that’s when I decided he had to be dealt with.”
“Dealt with,” I said. “That’s a pleasant term for coldblooded murder.”
“Nothing around here happens without my say-so,”
Ramos said. “And if you do not write this for me, I will
take your woman, Amanda, and I will make her scream
so loud that even if you do make it to heaven, Henry, her
cries will pierce the ears of God himself. I will grind her
bones to paste, and coat the walls of this room with her
blood. And I will make sure you are alive when all of it
takes place. And only when you have no screams left to
offer will you join her.”
I sat there, my whole body cold. Amanda.
“You see, when I kill a person, their death must not be
in vain. It must represent something. Your brother’s death
was a sign that even our highest-earning lieutenants were
not invulnerable. Kenneth Tsang’s death was a warning to
new employees as to what could happen if you weren’t
trustworthy. Brett Kaiser’s death showed that we can reach
anybody, anywhere. To me, blood and bone are like paint
and a brush. With the right artistry, one can create
a work
of art that speaks to people. Your family, Henry, would be
a message that our reach does not stop within our organization, but that we can touch even the smallest, most insignificant lives.”
“You wouldn’t…”
“I wouldn’t?” Ramos said. “Your mother and father
live in Bend, Oregon, on a sunny little street called East- The Darkness
347
view Drive. I can have a man there tonight. Your parents
could be dead before the evening news. Your parents are
insignificant, which is why their deaths would be all the
more glorious.”
“You’re a monster.”
“I’m only a monster because this involves you, Henry.
How many monsters do you see, day in and day out, in
your line of work? Proximity heightens emotions.
Things could be different. You could have been down on
your luck, penniless, and come to work for me. And
then, like so many of these young men, you would have
understood.”
“I don’t know anything besides what Paulina wrote,”
I said. “There’s nothing more to the story.”
“That’s not true,” she said. “You’ve been quite an
explorer. Tell me what you know.”
I looked up at her, and if looks could kill Eve Ramos
would have been dead several times over. “I know that you
and Rex Malloy were in Panama together, and that your
troop was attacked and Chester Malloy was killed. I also
know that it was in Panama that you learned how to synthesize Darkness, and you managed to smuggle it back to
America. I know that all your drug mules are young men,
and you’re using their debts to get them to work for you.”
“Great thing about those young men,” Eve said, “is
that they have something to lose. You see, when a man
has pride, he will do things he knows are wrong to prove
his worth. These men were born with nothing, but worked
their way into high-paying jobs. When those lives were
taken away, that ambition, that pride, left a gaping hole.
I simply offer to fill that hole. I will not use men from the
slums, poor urban souls who have nothing to lose.
Dealers are nothing more than hungry animals. You feed
348
Jason Pinter
them, throw them an extra bone here or there, they’ll do
anything for you.”
“Even die for you.”
“Not by choice, but yes.”
“Why 718 Enterprises?” I asked.
“Ha! That’s simple, Henry. I was born in Queens.”
“That’s it?”
The Darkness (2009) Page 33