The Darkness

43

Curt Sheffield had only been working for the NYPD for five years, but the past two days made it feel like a lifetime.

Two days. Twelve dead. All deaths related to this new drug, the Darkness.

For years, New York was considered one of the safest big cities in the world. The crime that existed was relegated to back alleys and dingy apartments. Upstanding citizens had little to fear as long as they used common sense.

The drug dealers were easy to smoke out. They were usually junkies themselves. They sold because that’s all they had, all they knew. They were uneducated, unloved, and an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay was a foreign concept.

And that’s why dealers were so easy to break.

In real life, those dealers in their teens and twenties didn’t have any sort of real loyalty to the drug lords. It wasn’t like television. There was no “game” and no loyalty beyond a wad of cash. Your employer was simply whoever could pay that day.

When a man making seventeen thousand dollars a year selling crack is forced to choose between turning in a man he barely knows or spending five years behind bars, the decision was always easy.

That’s why people on the top never lasted long. They could never offer the people below them a life worth risking on the streets. Every moment was fleeting, but when push came to shove a fistful of crumpled twenties wasn’t enough to keep someone from saving their own ass.

This drug, though, was different. The narcotics division was sweeping all those back alleys, talking to all their sources, offering all their informants good, hard cash for one tip that could loosen the first thread.

So far, they’d come up empty-handed.

And it wasn’t because the informants had suddenly grown balls or a sense of loyalty. It’s that they didn’t know.

However this product was being moved, it was being done away from the streets, away from the bottom feeders, away from the men and women who sold the very same drugs they ingested.

This was different. And that’s what scared Curt the most.

This city had the best police force in the world, but now that force was being slashed like an unfortunately located forest. A thousand cops, vanished from the streets, victims of a mayor legally beholden to a budget that had come in four billion dollars in the red.

Curt stopped to pick up a pizza on the way home. Half mushroom, half pepperoni. He had no bigger plans than to throw on his Rutgers sweatshirt, lounge on the couch with a few slices and a few beers and flip between games and late-night Cinemax.

As he approached his apartment building, he noticed a man hanging on the street corner. He was wearing a

T-shirt and sweatpants, and had a pair of slippers covering his bare feet. Ordinarily such a thing wouldn’t catch his eye, but this guy was swaying slightly, looking like every few seconds he had to remind himself not to topple over.

It was a chilly night, and clearly the man had either gone out knowingly underdressed or was so zoned out that he hadn’t noticed.

Suddenly he found himself walking over to the man, balancing the pizza in one hand while checking his gun to make sure it was at the ready. Curt had never been forced to use his gun off duty, but something about this man made him tense up. It was the jittery movements, how he looked like he might fall asleep one moment and then suddenly jerk awake the next. He looked like a classic user, and Curt had learned long ago that someone high could only be trusted as much as the drugs allowed them to be.

Curt approached slowly. His hand was getting warm from the bottom of the pizza box. As he got closer, he called out, “Hey, man, you okay?”

The man didn’t respond, just kept swaying. His right arm shot out and caught a lamppost to steady himself.

“I said, you okay, man?”

Then the guy whipped around, and the look in his eyes made Curt glad his gun was so close. His eyes were bloodshot, but they were wide open, crazylike, and he stared at

Curt with a mixture of confusion and apprehension, like an animal cornered who might bare its fangs out of pure panic.

Curt slowly knelt down and laid the pizza on the sidewalk. He hoped this guy was just drunk, and that he could throw him in a cab, be done with it and retreat to his pepperoni. But getting closer, he knew it wouldn’t be that simple.

“Hey, man,” Curt called out. “You’re not looking so hot. Why don’t you head home. Sleep it off.”

The man shook his head. Slowly at first, but then more rapidly until Curt was worried he might hurt himself.

“Whoa, slow down there. I’m a cop. See?” Curt took out his badge, showed it to the guy. “My name’s Officer

Sheffield. I’m here to help.”

“No,” the man moaned. “No. No. No. Nooooooo. ”

“It’s okay. We’ve all had bad days. Why don’t I call a cab…”

“It’s all gone,” he said, his body swaying faster than the breeze.

“What’s gone?”

“All of it,” he said. “All of it. It’s gone.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m sure you have some in your fridge.”

“No. I can’t get anymore.”

Curt kept playing along. “Why not?”

“Money,” he said, his voice like tar pulled through a pasta strainer. “I need it to buy more.”

“More what?”

“Darkness,” the man said, his eyes fixated on Curt.

Sheffield felt his body tense up. The drug was too early in its life for cops to fully know how users reacted to it, how their bodies responded. Each drug did different things to people who took it, and as a cop you learned how to deal with each of them. You had to be supple with your voice, malleable with your body language. The wrong tone or stilted reaction could set someone off, putting you or others at risk.

Curt didn’t know how to deal with people who used this new drug. They were unpredictable, but if anything the last few days had proven without a doubt was that they were uncompromisingly violent. He’d been trained on how to deal with addicts of various substances, but this seemed to go well beyond the training manual.

“Why do you want more, man? What say we get you somewhere safe. St. Luke’s hospital isn’t too far from here. We’ll get you a nice bed, get you cleaned up…”

“I don’t want to be cleaned up!” the man yelled. Curt stepped back, the look in the man’s eyes giving him pause. He thought about calling for an ambulance, figuring whether he liked it or not this guy could use a night in detox. The only worry was whether in the time it took for an ambulance to come, this man was intent on hurting

Curt or someone else.

“Hey, I hear you. That stuff is good. But being able to think clearly, ain’t nothing you buy can replicate that feeling.”

“You’re wrong,” the man slurred, his eyes closed as he smiled. “I feel…alive. I feel…fine.” Then his mood turned sour, the smile disappearing. “There’s no more money. No more money. It’s gone. I can’t have any more.”

“It’s okay, we can just…”

“I can’t have any more!” he shouted.

“Come on, buddy, that stuff isn’t going to do anything for you. Let’s talk.”

Then the man reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone. “They won’t take my calls anymore,” he said. “The last guy who came, Vinnie, he told me unless

I had cold hard cash he wouldn’t sell me anything.” The man held up the phone like it was a soiled diaper, and dropped it into the trash can. “Where am I going to get more money? I can’t find anybody to trade with me.”

“Trade with you? What the hell are you talking about? Listen to yourself, man. You don’t need more, you need help.”

Curt took out his phone and dialed 911. When the operator picked up, he said, “This is Officer Curt Sheffield, currently off duty, I have a ten sixty-nine in progress. Adult male, mid-thirties, high on I believe this new drug, Darkness. Guy looks pretty out of it and potentially dangerous. Send a unit and an ambulance to Eighty-eight and Amsterdam.”

“Ten-four, Officer Sheffield. Ambulance will be en route. Might have to wait for a squad car. Busy night tonight. Can you watch him until the EMTs get there?”

Curt sighed. Always shorthanded.

“I’ll do my best.” He hung up.

The man’s body was draped across the lamppost now, as he barely looked able to stand. Curt took a few steps closer, put his hand in his jacket pocket where he felt the comfort of his holster.

“Listen, buddy. I got a few friends coming. They’re going to take care of you. They…”

“My wife,” the man said.

“What’s you say?”

“My wife is dead,” the man said in a guttural rasp.

“She died.”

“I’m so sorry… How did she die?”

“I killed her.”

Curt stopped moving. His fingers went from tickling the gun to gripping the pistol.

His eyes darted back and forth as he spoke.

“I wanted to sell her wedding ring. She told me I couldn’t. I could have bought so much with it, but she said no. I didn’t know what to do. I needed it so badly. So I took a knife and I cut it off of her.”

“Oh, Jesus…”

The man looked down, reached into his pocket.

“Okay, my friend, I’m going to come over there. I have a gun on me. Please, don’t move any more and take your hand out of your pocket.”

Without warning the man yanked his hand from his pocket. It took Curt a second to realize what he was holding.

In the man’s hand was a severed finger. A glittering diamond ring still attached to it.

“I don’t know what to do!”

Suddenly the man dropped the finger, turned around and ran out into the middle of the street.

“Stop!” Curt shouted, sprinting forward.

Half a dozen cars were speeding up Amsterdam, headlights blazing in the dark blue sky. Their horns started blaring as the man weaved in and out of the way of thousands of pounds of metal passing him by at forty miles an hour.

Suddenly there was a flash of metal, sparks, and a terrible crunching sound as Curt stopped dead in his tracks. Curt saw the man’s body go flying, literally lifted into the air, where it spun end over end until landing in a heap by the curb.

The car, a dark sedan, came screeching to a halt. The driver leaped out of the car, hands holding his head in disbelief. Cars ground to a stop all around the sedan, whose hood was dented, grill smashed inward. A slick of blood pooling around the hood ornament.

And just below the front of the car was a sight that would never leave Curt Sheffield as long as he lived.

Resting on the asphalt, in a perfect row as if placed there gently, was a pair of slippers.

“Oh my God,” he said. The man looked at Curt, his mouth wide open. “You…you saw that. He ran out in front of me. He…oh, sweet Jesus…”

Curt ran over to the body, knelt down next to it. The man’s face looked like it had been bludgeoned with a sledgehammer, and his limbs were twisted in a way that

God had most certainly not intended.

He ripped his phone from his pocket, dialed 911. “Ten fifty-three,” Curt said, his mouth dry, the words tumbling out. “Officer needs assistance. We have a motor vehicle accident. One civilian is down and hurt, potentially fatal.

He’s not breathing.”

Curt put his fingers to the man’s neck, searched for a pulse.

He felt nothing.

Picking up the man’s wrist, he tried again. Still nothing.

No use. He was long gone.

“I think I lost him,” Curt said into the phone.

When he was assured an ambulance was en route,

Curt stood up, took in the scene unfolding in front of him.

Cars were lining up down the street, drivers getting out at first to see what was causing the traffic holdup. Then when they saw what was going on, phones came out as they called 911. Onlookers began to crowd the sidewalks.

A few people started heading toward the body. Some looked concerned, fearful, but a few had a glint in their eyes that Curt didn’t like. He knew that not everybody was concerned for this guy’s well-being.

Curt stood up, pulled out his badge. Let his arm hang loose so his jacket opened up a bit, revealing the gun and holster inside.

“NYPD!” he shouted. The surge stopped. A few people slipped back into the crowds and disappeared, disappointed they didn’t have a chance to search the man for jewelry or money. “An ambulance is on the way. I’m going to need everyone to back away and clear room.”

He walked toward the crowd, and they stepped back, obeying. Then Curt remembered something.

He turned and jogged back to the street corner where he’d seen the man. Reaching into the garbage can, he managed to find the man’s cell phone he’d dropped inside. He wiped off the crud and liquid, relieved to see the machine was still working.

He clicked it on.

The home page blinked on, and an LCD screen read

Gil’s Phone.

Gil. That was the dead man’s name.

Then Curt scrolled through the numerous functions until he found a button marked Recent Calls.

He clicked on it, and saw Gil’s call log from the last twelve hours. Incoming calls marked with an orange

“down” arrow, outgoing with a red “up” arrow.

Then Curt felt his breath catch in his throat.

There was one phone number that stood out. Gil had called it no less than ten times in the last three hours.

And the number had a 718 prefix.

Without hesitating, Curt called the number from

Gil’s phone.

It rang twice, and then was picked up.

“Mr. Meadows, we’ve already explained to you the situation. Until you have legal tender available, we cannot serve you. Goodbye.”

The person on the other end hung up.

And as soon as they hung up, Curt called one more number. A number he never thought he’d be calling to help him do his job.

Curt had never gone undercover. He wasn’t sure he could pull this off.

But he knew, without a doubt, that Henry Parker could.