The Darkness

27

“Nobody knows anything.”

Even though I was holding a telephone to my ear, I wanted to wrap my hands around the piece of plastic and choke the life out of it.

“You can’t be serious,” I said.

“I’m telling you, Henry,” Curt said. “Nobody here knows a damn thing about Paulina Cole’s article. Nobody knows who gave her those quotes, nobody knows where she got her information, and if it makes you feel any better nobody here has even heard of this so-called magic drug, Darkness or whatever. It’s like she pulled the whole thing out of thin air.”

My head hurt. Both from the chewing out by Wallace, the frustration in having been scooped by Paulina Cole, and the feeling that Curt was telling the truth. Curt had his finger pretty well placed on the pulse of the NYPD, and whenever a bombshell was about to drop, even if he didn’t clue me in ahead of time he was rarely surprised.

Right now, though, he spoke as if he was as pissed off as

I was. It sounded like Curt felt he’d been scooped by

Paulina as well.

“This whole thing doesn’t make any sense,” I said.

“And the details about the rocks inside the balloon-you 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.”

“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.

“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 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.

“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.”

“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.

“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 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.