The Fury hp-4

by Jason Pinter

  Wallace leaned back, curious.

  "What is it then?"

  "Twenty years ago, Jack wrote a book called

  Through the Darkness. It was about the rise of drugs and drug-related violence. Do you remember it? Jack was working at the Gazette when it was published."

  "I sure do. O'Donnell took a year off to write that book, and after it came out and became a bestseller none of us expected him back. We figured he'd take the money and work on books full-time, especially when

  Hollywood came calling. But the news runs in that man's veins. Leaving never even occurred to him."

  "It still hasn't," I said. Awkwardness choked the room. I had no idea if Wallace had even been in contact with Jack since he left, but the man's downcast eyes let me know he was happy to talk about Jack's past, but less so discussing the man's future. Part of me felt as if Wallace and Hillerman bore some responsibility for

  Jack's condition. They knew his alcoholism had been getting worse, but other than a few halfhearted BandAid measures they'd stand by, let him turn in substan dard material, drinking Baileys with his coffee during war room meetings at nine in the morning. Perhaps they let it slide because they didn't want to believe it could destroy a man with his reputation. Or maybe they turned their backs because they needed to. Needed him.

  "So what about the book?" Wallace asked, his voice sounding less patient, a little less happy I was there.

  "Butch Willingham," I said. "He was a street dealer killed in '88. His death would have gone unnoticed- like most of his colleagues, if you will-except that unlike the others he survived his execution for a few minutes. He had just enough time to write two words, using his own blood. Do you remember what those words were?"

  "No, I can't say I do. I haven't read the book in at least a decade."

  "I remember," I said. "Not too often you forget some thing like that. The two words Willingham wrote were

  'The Fury.' Do they ring a bell now?"

  Wallace sat there without taking his eyes off me. I waited, unsure of what he was going to say. Instead, he just sat there, waiting for the blanks to be filled in.

  Since Wallace's memory didn't seem to be jogged much, I pulled a copy of the tattered paperback from my pocket. Moving around to the side of Wallace's desk- and realizing I hadn't ever viewed the room from that perspective before-I showed him the passage it came from.

  "Look at this," I said. "Tell me if you remember anything about it, or Jack writing it."

  Wallace took a pair of thin reading glasses from his desk drawer, slipped them on and read the passage.

  After a few seconds, he took the book from my hands and began to read further. I could tell from his eyes and intense concentration something was coming into focus.

  He was remembering. Excitement surged through me.

  This was something, I knew it. It had to be.

  "The Fury," Wallace said. "If I recall correctly, it was a big nothing."

  I stepped back around, sat down, confused. "What do you mean?"

  "I remember when this happened, the Willingham case got a little press for a day or two, mainly over the gruesome details. You're right, it's not too often someone writes words in their own blood while dying, and the press, present company often included, loves the chance to hyperbolize and scare people to death with Stephen

  King-style visuals. O'Donnell did look into this, inter viewing dozens of dealers, punks and scumbags."

  "And?"

  "For a while he was convinced that there was an…entity…I guess that's what you could call it… named the Fury. It was the kind of word that existed only on the lips of people involved in drugs, mainly dealing. The Fury was some kind of mythical demon, some kind of human being so cold-blooded and cruel that nobody dared cross it."

  "All those people killed during those years," I said, the picture coming into view. "Jack thought this Fury was behind it all. I have no idea if that's a person, an organization or a code for something else. But it's in there for a reason."

  "That's right," Wallace said. "If I recall, the first draft of this book was a good hundred or so pages longer, but Jack's publisher balked at a lot of what he'd written about in the chapters on the Fury. There were no eyewitness accounts. It began and ended with Wil lingham. Nobody was willing to talk. They felt Jack was stretching too far with the blood angle, and by printing chapters about some boogeyman, some all-powerful kingpin, it weakened his other arguments. Made him look like he was aiming for sensationalism rather than good, solid journalism."

  "Who won the argument?"

  "Well," Wallace said, "you see how long your edition of the book is? It was going to be another hundred or so longer."

  "So why did he leave that one part in?" I asked. "If everything else relating to this was taken out, why did they let him leave Butch Willingham writing that before he died?"

  "If I remember-and you'll forgive me if my memory bank doesn't access twenty-year-old information as readily as it used to-Jack threatened to pull the plug on the whole book at that point. They'd already paid him, I believe a good six-figure sum, quite a penny for a book back in those days. And if they'd refused to publish, they wouldn't have recouped a penny since they would have been in breach of contract. So they allowed Jack to keep that one bit in. Kind of an appease ment. Jack considered it a footprint that couldn't be erased by time. And because what Willingham had written was in the coroner's report, it was a matter of public record and could stay in. Everything else, they felt, was conjecture."

  "So Jack thought there was more to the Fury, then."

  "I believe so, but again I'm speaking from what I recall twenty years ago. Jack and I haven't spoken about that book or that story in years. He's written half a dozen books since then, most of which made him a lot more money than Through the Darkness. And with no new leads to track down, no other proof or witnesses, it was on to new matters. In a city where new stories materialize every day, if you spend your time hoping a fresh angle will pop out of the ground you'll miss ev erything going around right beside your head. Jack's a great reporter, but he's not stupid."

  "He's not a coward either," I said. "He kept that bit in there for a reason. Like you said, a footprint."

  "Maybe he did," Wallace said.

  "I need his files," I said.

  "Henry," Wallace said, folding his hands across his chest. "You know better than that. Besides, company policy states that any work, research or otherwise, done on books is kept outside of the office."

  "He must have something here," I said. "I've seen

  Jack's apartment. He barely had any furniture, let alone files. Please, do me a favor. Let me see Jack's files. I know there's a storage room here. I swear I won't take anything that doesn't pertain to the Willingham case.

  And I'll even do the digging for you."

  "I can't let you do that," Wallace said. "But I'll meet you halfway. I'll go through it myself and send it over to you if I find anything. I'm going to err on the side of caution, though, so don't expect much."

  "Thank you," I said. I stood up, prepared to leave.

  Then I saw a copy of that morning's Gazette on

  Wallace's chair. I looked up at him, raised an eyebrow.

  "Go on, take it," he said, grinning. "But after today you don't get diddly-squat for free until I see your name below a story."

  22

  The subway was hot and humid as I went back uptown.

  I had no idea how long it would take for Wallace to get me those files. The man had been gracious enough to offer, and frankly I didn't expect much going in. I des perately wanted to know what Jack knew, what else he knew about the Willingham murder. And what, if anything, it had to do with Stephen Gaines.

  The strange thing was, the deeper I looked into this, the further away it seemed to go from Gaines. From him to Beth-Ann Downing, from Rose Keller to Butch Wil lingham, there seemed to be a pattern of behavior that went back twenty years. I had no idea how long, if at all, my brother had been deal
ing. But I was damn sure that it had somehow gotten him killed.

  Now, I've read the books. I've seen the TV shows. I read as much news as I can take until my eyeballs hurt.

  I'm well aware that pushing is not a profession made for duration. People get into it hoping to make a quick buck, usually because they have no other options. They have neither the education to get a job punching a clock, nor the desire to work for a corporation that can terminate them without a moment's notice. There was some thing romantic about the notion of a drug dealer, some thing that went against the system. But when I saw

  Stephen Gaines that night on the street, I did not see a man defiant in the face of unspeakable odds stacked against him. I saw a defeated, emaciated, broken-down young man. A man scared of something. Something he felt, for some reason, I could help with.

  I was a newspaper reporter. Nothing more, nothing less. I sincerely doubted Gaines came to me because I was his flesh and blood. He'd had years to try to reach out. He came to me because something about my pro fession, my line of work, could have helped him, thrown him a lifeline.

  I sat down, my butt immediately becoming stuck to the seat by a clear substance I hadn't seen before. The joys of traveling on the MTA. Unfolding that morning's copy of the Gazette, I put all thoughts of Gaines and

  Willingham out of my mind until I got home. Perhaps good old-fashioned newspaper reporting would help me out. Clear my mind.

  But when I saw the story on page eleven, I nearly threw up.

  Man, 27, Shot to Death in His Apartment

  A photo accompanied the article. I recognized the man in the shot. I'd seen him just recently.

  It was the guy whose briefcase I'd stolen. He was found last night, murdered, shot twice in the back of the head.

  23

  I couldn't think of any words. My mouth was dry, my head throbbing. Amanda and I were sitting in a cold room in the Twenty-eighth Precinct on Eighth Avenue between 122d and 123d streets. On the table in front of us were several items: an empty briefcase, several thousand dollars' worth of various types of narcotics; and one cell phone.

  The man's name was Hector Guardado. He was twenty-seven years old. Lived alone in Spanish Harlem.

  According to police reports, Hector had less than a thousand dollars in his bank account. But upon search ing his apartment, they found nearly fifty thousand dollars in cash stuffed underneath a fake floorboard in his kitchen.

  Hector was not some young kid with no education dealing to make ends meet. He had an MBA. A freaking business degree. Yet despite the degree, despite the hundred thousand dollars he spent to attain it, Hector

  Guardado had not been able to find employment since returning to New York City, his hometown.

  The other day I'd stolen Hector's briefcase to learn more about his dealings, to learn more about this group of misfits that my brother may or may not have been a part of. And now the man was dead, murdered in cold blood. Another young man killed like a piece of meat, shot twice in the back of the head, surely by someone who knew him.

  Because of that, I called Amanda the moment I got out of the subway. Stopping at the apartment first to pick up the briefcase and its contents, I headed straight for the police. No more clandestine detective work. No more hiding my hand until all the cards were dealt. A life had been taken.

  It made me sick to my stomach to think that Hector

  Guardado's life might have been taken because of his stolen briefcase, but two days ago he was alive. Two days ago the briefcase, along with the drugs and his cell phone, were in his possession.

  And now today he was dead, and the drugs were in police custody. I wasn't willing to write it off as a coincidence.

  "You okay?" Amanda asked. I didn't nod. I wasn't the one on a slab somewhere, or being written about in the newspaper. She seemed to get this, because she didn't ask again.

  Soon the door opened and a familiar face walked in:

  Detective Sevi Makhoulian.

  Makhoulian sat down in a chair across from us.

  Looked me over, then looked at the items on the table.

  He took a pair of rubber gloves from his pocket, spread open the black folds of the suitcase and peered in.

  "This everything?"

  I nodded.

  "And this was all in Guardado's possession when you took it from him."

  I nodded again. "You can fingerprint it," I said. "I never touched the stuff." I nudged Amanda slightly with my elbow, giving her a silent thanks for the advice.

  Makhoulian sighed and leaned back in his chair. He folded his arms behind his head as though deciding what to watch on television. He didn't look the least bit concerned with anything.

  "What are you going to do?" I asked.

  "Frankly," he said, "I'm not sure yet. Unfortunately we can't charge you with theft, because Mr. Guardado would have been our only witness, and frankly it would be a waste of time. Because, though I don't know you that well, anytime a person willingly brings half a pound of weed, a fourth of a kilo of cocaine and enough crack rocks to keep Flavor Flav's teeth chattering for a year, they're not the ones using it."

  "We're not," Amanda said. "We weren't."

  Makhoulian nodded, then thumbed his lip. "Look,

  Parker, I know you think your father is innocent. If I was in your shoes, I'd want to do anything I could to help him, too. And if he is innocent, he'll be found as such by a jury of his peers."

  "The case hasn't even gone to the grand jury yet,"

  Amanda spat.

  "True, but we all know that's a mere formality. We have his fingerprints. We have his receipts from his trip to New York. And we have a motive."

  "Does the name Butch Willingham ring a bell?" I asked suddenly.

  Makhoulian looked confused. Said, "No, why?"

  I believed him. "Nothing," I said. "Just a guy who was killed a long time ago."

  "And you bring it up, why, as a brainteaser?"

  "I'm not sure why," I said. "Just wondering if I'm the only one who thinks there's a lot more to this than a simple case of a guy murdering his son. Since, you know, another young man was just killed in the same manner as Stephen Gaines."

  "The investigation into the death of Hector Guardado is under way," Sevi said. "You're a reporter, Henry, right? Can you tell me how many murders were com mitted in New York City last year?"

  "Not the exact number, but I believe it was under five hundred."

  "Four hundred and ninety-two," Makhoulian said.

  His eyes were riveted on mine. This was not a history lesson or an attempt to belittle my knowledge. "Now, first of all, that was the lowest number of murders com mitted in Manhattan in over forty years. First time it's been under five hundred since 1963, to be precise. Thing is, even though that's low for our standards, that's still an awful lot of homicides. Now, think about that word.

  Homicide. These four hundred ninety-two people were killed by someone else. They didn't step into open elevator shafts or pee on the third rail. They were killed.

  Murdered. Now, you are a reporter. So it's part of your job to report crimes that are extraordinary. Like Sharon

  Dombrowski, the elderly woman on Spring Street who was so convinced she was being targeted by a robber that she hooked up an electric cable to her door, so when her poor landlord came by to check on a leak and knocked he was electrocuted to death. Or Percy Whitmore who bought a studio in Little Italy using a loan from his father. Only when he didn't repay in time, Percy's dad came over and smacked his son across the face so hard ol' Percy fell and cracked his skull open on his bookshelf. Accidental? Maybe. But homicides nonetheless."

  "What's your point?" I said.

  "See, you write about these instances because they're one in a million. Like a shark attack, they're so gruesome and out of the ordinary that people want to hear about them just like how they slow down when passing a car wreck. What doesn't get that press are the boring murders. The two taps to the back of the head."

  Makhoulian mi
micked pointing a gun to his cranium, cocking his trigger finger twice to illustrate the shots.

  "You know how many of those nearly five hundred murders were the result of gunshot wounds? Four hundred and twenty-eight. Now, I'm not a mathemati cian, but that's somewhere between eighty and ninety percent. So you're going to come in here and tell me, definitively, that these two murders are the result of some vast conspiracy that I'm too dumb to see?"

  "I'm not saying you're dumb. But Hector called my brother that night."

  "According to Verizon, the phone call lasted eight seconds. You know how long eight seconds is? Long enough to realize you've dialed the wrong number before you hang up. There are no other records of these two having ever corresponded, no other calls between the two."

  "You don't see these killings as two pieces to-"

  "Pieces my ass, you're reading too much James Ellroy. Know what they teach us in the academy? The rule of lex parsimoniae. Since I'm guessing you're not exactly fluent, what the Latin translates to is 'entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.' Boil down the translation, what that means is if a man is murdered, and the fingerprints on the gun belong to someone he knows, who has access to him, and who has a motive to kill him, I'd be willing to bet my badge, my wife, my mortgage and my iPhone you put that killer in cell block

  D you've got the right guy."

  "You said usually," I replied. "You said eighty to ninety percent. Well, it's my job to find the exception to your rule. I've told you everything I know. I'm hoping when I walk out of here you do something with it, and don't piss it all away because of what you read in a damn textbook. Because I find that extra few percent,

  Detective. Father or not, brother or not, it's just what I do."

  Amanda and I stood up. Waited for Detective Sevi

  Makhoulian to say something. When he didn't, we waved at the camera so the observers in the other room would unlock the door. Makhoulian nodded, a click signaled that the door was unlocked, and I left to prove to the detective I was a man of my word.

  And as I walked down the hallway, Amanda's unsteady hand locked in mine, I could feel the detec tive's eyes on my back.