The Hunters

Chapter 3

Jack O’Donnell walked into his apartment, dropped his bags on the floor and stifled a sob. It had been months since he’d set foot in this place, and the last time he did that was one of the worst moments of his life. Crying, humiliated, left as a joke for the city’s vultures to feast on.

Jack had spent his whole life chronicling New York. He knew every nook and cranny, every in and out, could recite from memory the history of the city from Robert Moses to Phil Spitzer. He truly felt this city was a part of him, and he would die leaving a part of himself in it.

But not like this. Not like this.

Not a broken mess, a broken man, shamed into a rehabilitation center by a vengeful competitor who wanted nothing more than to embarrass him for profit. Paulina Cole, a woman who was a parasite with a good wardrobe. Vermin who could apply eyeliner. A woman he’d worked with for years, only to fall victim to her savage muckraking.

It was Paulina who’d uncovered the full extent of Jack’s alcoholism and splayed it all over the pages of her newspaper. There was no reason for it. Jack was not a celebrity. His demons would not sell newspapers like he was some nasty debutante caught with her pants down or some singer caught on film smoking a crack pipe. He was a newspaperman. That’s all. Which made what Paulina did that much more hurtful. She did it for no other reason than to humiliate him, to try to ruin his career.

And she nearly did.

Jack barely had the money for the rehab stint. He didn’t even try to get the Gazette to cover it. Asking for that money would have been nearly as embarrassing as the stint itself. And whereas Jack had made good money over the years on his books and film options, he was not the world’s most thrifty spender. Several divorces had left his savings a fraction of what they had been, and along with the drinking, he’d been known to throw a few bets down from time to time.

And now Jack O’Donnell stood there in his foyer, wondering if perhaps in some way, Paulina Cole had done him a favor.

He brought the bags into the bedroom and unpacked. Strange, he thought as he placed the folded clothes back into the closet. He’d never been one of those people who unpacked right after a trip. His duffels would sit there stuffed to the gills for a week or more before Jack finally began to run low on underwear. But now, unpacking was something cathartic, cleansing. It meant he was home.

Jack had gone to see Henry even before returning to his loft. Henry was the reason Jack checked out of rehab, the reason he was here right now. He still had a few friends at the Gazette, people he could trust with his ordeal knowing they wouldn’t go blabbing to Wallace Langston-the editor-in-chief-or Harvey Hillerman, the publisher. And when they told him what had happened to Henry, about Stephen Gaines and the enigma known only as the Fury, Jack knew the time was right for him to reclaim his life.

Jack had written about the Fury nearly twenty years ago. It had been a small part of a larger book-the only reason it was not more prominent was that there was a severe dearth of facts. There were rumors, innuendos, but what Jack could print and back up was scant.

Now, it seemed, Henry had stumbled upon the scent Jack had left lingering all those years ago, and it seemed like fate that this would be the story to rejuvenate his career. Jack had never worked side by side with Henry on a story before, and he was curious to see what the kid could do. Henry was young, scarily young, but had broken more stories and shown more guts than some reporters who’d been around forty years. Bloodhounds were born, not made, and the key to finding the best stories was being able to sniff them out on your own. Any reporter could have a “deep throat,” someone who handed them a lead on a platter. It took a special kind of person to find that thread themselves and pull it until the spool unraveled.

Jack had been like that. Years ago. And he wanted to believe Henry was like that.

He would find out tomorrow.

Once his bags were emptied, he stripped down and went into the bathroom. The mirror’s reflection was not too kind. His gray beard had gone scraggly, his eyes had heavy bags. He did look worse than he felt, for whatever that was worth, and he hoped his appearance would not affect his job performance tomorrow. People could sense a man who was tired, and had been through too much to perform properly.

Jack took a long, hot shower. He scrubbed away at his body hard enough to remove a layer of skin. Then he trimmed his beard, clipped his nails and combed his hair.

The reflection this time came back a little better, a little more dignified, but Jack knew that what was inside him mattered the most. Still, he wanted to feel like a new man. Or at least the man he had once been.

Jack went over to the leather sofa in his living room, plopped down and sank into the plush cushions. Comfy, he thought. Before rehab Jack had rarely taken the time to relax. Most hours spent on the couch were with a snifter of something strong, something to dull the nerves, while some idiotic show ran on the television.

Jack had been a zombie for years, and it took abject humiliation for him to realize it.

He turned the television on, flipped through a hundred channels of nothing before turning it off. When he’d exhausted that, Jack walked into his study. It was a room about twelve feet by sixteen, filled with cherry-wood bookshelves and a thick oak desk that was nearly bare. Funny.

When Jack was a young man, the only thing he wanted more than to be a reporter was to have a desk massive enough to hold all his worldly possessions. A big desk was a sign of stature, a symbol that you’d made it. And now he had that desk, and it was embarrassingly empty.

Jack did a brief inventory of the items on his desk:

– one printer, not hooked up

– two empty picture frames

– one picture of his old dog, Bubbles, who had been more of a partner than any of his wives

– one beer mug, still with alcohol residue staining the bottom. It was a miracle fungus had not begun to grow from it.

– between two heavy paperweights, first printings of the American editions of each of his books

His old desk at the Gazette was a third of the size, but had three times as many items on it. Fitting, he supposed, since work was really where his life took place. That was where he kept newspaper clippings, notebooks, important phone numbers. It was at home where Jack ceased to function properly. At work Jack had everything he could possibly need.

Jack went over and plucked out a hardcover copy of Through the Darkness. He hadn’t picked up the book in years. He remembered all the aching late nights, spent hunched over a typewriter while the sun rose outside of the crummy one-bedroom apartment he rented in Hell’s Kitchen. At the time Jack remembered hating it, but looking back, he couldn’t think of any fonder memories.

He remembered the pride he felt when he sent the finished manuscript to his publisher, and the letter he received from his editor just days later with just one sentence on it:

This book is an American classic, and we will be honored to publish it as such.

Jack found a paperback copy on his shelf and read all the glowing praise reviewers had heaped upon it. He felt a swell of pride. This book was him, something he’d poured his heart and soul into and could never be taken away. The book was truth, it was light, and it was everything he could have been.

Only the book wasn’t finished.

The Fury was out there, Jack was sure of it. He slipped the paperback onto the shelf and placed the hardcover gently back between the other books. He sat down at his desk. It was late. Much later than he’d stayed up in a long time, at least, the latest he’d stayed up while also sober.

It felt good.

Jack was nervous. Nervous about tomorrow, about seeing Henry, about what they would find.

He hadn’t felt truly nervous in a long, long time.

Jack O’Donnell sat in that chair, folded his hands behind his head and decided he would try to stay awake to watch the sun rise.