The Mark

37

After freeing the plastic sheaf from the wall, I carried it into the living room. The small edgewood dining room table had been wiped clean during the break-in, candlesticks bent and twisted and dinnerware shattered. I blocked Gustofson’s body from my mind, ignoring the dried blood, the acrid smell. I would have preferred to examine our finding anywhere but a dead man’s apartment, but we had nowhere to go. Time was running out, each second bringing an increased sense of dread. When was the last shoe going to drop, our last free seconds melting away? This envelope held the answers to so many questions. A lot of people were willing to kill for this, and I had no doubt that what happened to Hans Gustofson could happen to me as well.

I placed the package on the table, my breathing long and slow. I gently slipped my fingers inside, finally touched what people had died for, had killed for. I ran my hand along the envelope’s grainy surface, still sharp, untouched by the elements. It was fastened with a red drawstring. Unwinding the twine, I took a deep breath and opened the envelope.

A binder slid out onto the table. The cover was shiny and black. I ran my hand over its smooth surface. Silence drummed in my ears as I slowly lifted the cover to see what lay inside.

There was a photo of two men mounted on the first page, and an index card pasted below it with two names written in thick ink. The photo looked at least twenty years old. Both men were wearing overcoats. And they looked like they didn’t want anyone else to know they were meeting.

Detective Lieutenant Harvey N. Pennick

Jimmy “Eight Ball” Rizzoli

I turned the page. Another photo, another index card. Another detective. Another guy with a cliched nickname. I flipped the pages. More photos, more cards, more cops, more crooks. The book was full of them. Immediately it dawned on me. I knew what the connection was. The revelation made my head swim.

I knew how Hans Gustofson was connected to Michael DiForio. What John Fredrickson had been looking for at the Guzmans’ house. That many more lives were at stake than just mine and Amanda’s. That I’d stumbled onto something big, something huge, and oh, God, there was a whole lot more at stake than my insignificant life.

Within these pages were images that could ruin a city.

Or control it.

Fear rushed through my veins like a bad drug, seizing hold of my body. I stood up to compose myself. I felt dizzy, unbalanced. Whispering, under my breath. Oh God, oh Jesus, oh shit, oh fuck.

Amanda was staring at me. She was looking at the last page, the page I’d stopped on. The page that tied it all together.

“Is that…” she said, her voice trembling like she was walking a tightrope thousands of feet above ground. “Are those…”

“Yes,” I said weakly. “That’s Officer John Fredrickson and Angelo Pineiro.”

Inside this album were pasted hundreds of photos. Policemen. Politicians. Government officials. All captured by the steady eye of Hans Gustofson. The negatives were neatly tucked away in the back for safekeeping.

In some photos they were taking money, in others they were buying or selling drugs. Some were having sex with women. Some were having sex with men. All their faces were clear as day. The subjects were all unaware. Taking bribes. Some men seemed to be playing to the camera-they knew about Hans taking their picture from the shadows. Some photos looked twenty years old, some as fresh as the moonlight streaming through the window.

Some cops were in uniform and some were in plainclothes, easily distinguishable from their posture and countenance that they knew what they were doing was so, so wrong.

The patsy’s name was written on the index card. First and last, middle initial. Rank. Their office. Also listed were their associates, the men or women they were photographed with. I recognized many of them. I recognized the name Angelo Pineiro. Blanket.

The Right Hand of Lucifer.

Oh, God…

Some of the faces looked sad, remorseful. Faces that once held dreams of nobility but had since been reduced to this. Some were happy, jovial, looking like they’d known their associates for years. Unrepentant for their crimes, or disillusioned to the point of apathy.

“Jesus,” Amanda said.

“I hope he hears you,” I said. “Because nobody else seems to.”

We flipped through the entire book, an encyclopedia of corruption spanning a generation. And on the very last page, staring back at us, was John Fredrickson.

He looked weary, haggard. He held a wad of cash in his palm. Officer John Fredrickson. The man who’d died at my hands. The man I was being hunted for, I’d given up my life for. I closed my eyes and replayed that fateful night in my mind. The deafening gunshot that ended one life and changed the course of another.

This binder was supposed to find its way to Luis Guzman. It was what John Fredrickson had nearly beaten three people to death for. Luis Guzman was the courier for John Fredrickson. Fredrickson was working for Michael DiForio. The hired muscle. Cop muscle. The strongest kind. DiForio had the goods on Fredrickson, and was using him to deliver the very photos that possessed his soul.

But after all that, there was still an unanswered question.

Who killed Hans Gustofson?

It couldn’t have been DiForio. According to the newspapers, I’d stolen the package and the maniac in black seemed to think this as well. Assuming the assassin had been hired by DiForio, there would be no sense in him killing Hans before receiving the photos.

No, Gustofson was killed by someone working outside of Michael DiForio’s jurisdiction. Someone who knew about the photos and wanted them for him or herself. Someone who’d clearly left empty-handed and was still looking.

But as I stood there looking at the photos, another realization came to me.

Within this binder was the opportunity to reclaim my life. John Fredrickson had set me on an unalterable course to hell, but this album held my salvation. These photos were the story of a lifetime. A generation of corruption captured on film. This could bring down the entire criminal justice system. It could restart my career, put it back on the path I thought had been destroyed.

Here it was, perhaps the greatest story I could ever hope to uncover, the story I’d longed to write for years, sitting in front of me in literal black and white. Here was a network of corruption whose capillaries reached far and wide, whose tainted blood carried venom to all parts of the city, and spanned decades. This was my Watergate, my Abu Ghraib.

“What do we do with this?” Amanda asked. “Bring it to the cops? Burn it?”

“No,” I said, my voice monotone. “I need to use it.”

“Use it how?”

“This is my story.” I turned to Amanda, my eyes desperately wide, hoping she’d understand the incredible opportunity in front of me.

“What do you mean, ‘your story,’ Henry? I don’t understand.”

“Amanda,” I said, gently taking her hands in mine, feeling the strong pulse in her wrists. “This album, everything inside it, this could make my career right again. If I went to the Gazette with this story, I’d be a page-one writer in no time. This is the kind of moment careers are built on. Reporters can go an entire lifetime and not find anything close to this. I can’t pass it up.”

Amanda pulled her hands away, crossed them on her chest.

“I don’t know, Henry. It doesn’t seem right. This could single-handedly destroy the NYPD. If you write about this, it could bring down the city. Think about it. There are thousands and thousands of cops and lawmen in New York who risk their lives every day. We have pictures of probably twenty guys who are still on active duty. You’d risk everything they work and die for, just for a story?”

“You don’t understand,” I said. “Sometimes you only get one chance, one moment to make a difference. If I don’t take this…I don’t know if it will ever happen again.

“Don’t you see?” I pleaded. “Don’t you see what this could mean for my life? I have nothing right now. I have no name, no hope, and my future is fucked. This could bring it all back. I can expose the truth and make up for everything that’s happened.”

“And then what?” Amanda said, her back ramrod straight, her eyes slicing through me. “You make your name. Congratulations, Henry Parker. Then what happens to the millions of people who lose faith because you want to make your name? The thousands of cops who have to answer for the few who went bad? You’re thinking how it will affect you, and that’s selfish. You want to be a great reporter? You need to remember that the story isn’t about you.”

“Please. This is everything I’ve ever dreamed of. To make a difference. To change lives.” I thumped my hand on the binder, felt the shockwave rattle through my body. “This book could do that.”

“Whose life will it change besides yours?” Amanda yelled. “Whose? These cops? It’ll ruin them. The people? Do you really think losing faith in their protectors-most of it completely unwarranted-will make their lives better?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered. “But I can’t just pass this up.”

“Yes, you can,” she said. “Why did you want to become a reporter in the first place? Really, why?”

“To help people,” I said. “To tell the truth about what needed to be told. To give people what they deserve to know.”

Amanda’s voice grew soft as a tear landed softly on the table. Surprisingly, it had come from me.

“You can help people,” she said. “You can help them by making things right. Not just for yourself. That door opens for everyone, Henry, but this isn’t your time. I know you’re innocent. I know you have a good heart. So use it. Make things right for these people. Help them. Then help yourself.”

Her eyes found mine. I cursed the cold book beneath my hand, cursed that my life had been altered. That this small folder had the power to change-and end-many other lives as well. And now I was questioning something I never thought I would. Every moment I hesitated, that door would be closing. All I had to do was prop it open. But I couldn’t.

“You’re right,” I said. “There has to be another way.” I slid the album back into the envelope and sealed it. “But right now we need to leave.”

She threw her arms around me. I had no energy to hug her back. “Now the front door, I’ll happily walk through.”

I gathered up the package. But as we left the apartment, a deep male voice called out from the stairwell. We froze.

“Hello?”

Amanda grabbed my arm, whispered, “Henry?”

Again, “Hello?”

I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Neither of us reacted. We couldn’t let anyone see us. We had to hide. Putting my finger to my lips, I ushered Amanda back inside Gustofson’s apartment. I went to push the front door closed, but something stopped it. A hand. Someone was standing right outside the door.

“I heard a noise, is something broken?” The man pushed harder. There was nothing I could do. The door swung open. A Hispanic man wearing paint-splattered overalls stood in the doorway. One word flashed through my head.

Superintendent.

He glanced down at the floor, covered in dark brown pools. He saw my hands, the residue of blood from when I’d fallen. He looked up at me, his mouth agape, horror in his eyes. He backed away, arms outstretched, pleading.

“It’s not what you think,” I said, realizing every criminal in history probably said that. Suddenly the man turned and bolted down the stairs.

“Help! Policia! Somebody’s been killed!”

“Oh, fuck.” I turned to Amanda. “Come on, there must be a fire escape.”

We sprinted through the apartment, time again being sliced maliciously thin. There was no fire escape in the living room, and no windows in the bathroom. We hurried into Gustofson’s bedroom, where we found a metal stairwell outside the window, a mesh screen covering it.

I braced my leg against the wall, pain shooting through it, and yanked open the screen. We clambered onto the fire escape, towering forty or fifty feet above the alley below us. Carefully we wound our way down, gripping the rusty metal guardrails for dear life.

Down a flight of stairs, across the metal floor, repeat. A siren wailed in the distance. Within minutes I’d have another murder pinned to my chest. The scarlet M. My hole was growing deeper, the dirt walls caving in.

We scrambled to the bottom platform where a ladder dangled like a piece of spaghetti. There was a pile of black garbage bags below us. And beneath that, cement. Even the bottom of the ladder was a good fifteen feet from the ground.

“You go first,” Amanda said. I smiled back at her.

“And who said chivalry was dead?”

I handed her the album and wiped my sweaty hands on my shirt. Gripping the metal tight, I made my way down the ladder. Hand over hand, keeping my feet even and balanced. When I reached the bottom rung, I stopped. I didn’t want to land amidst the garbage bags, which were covered with broken bottles.

I leaned to my right, then exploded off with my left foot, jumping at an angle and landing just beyond the bags. My knees buckled as I hit the ground, my palm scraping the cement, tearing the skin from it.

Wincing, I gave Amanda a thumbs-up. I grabbed several garbage bags and tossed them off the pile, clearing a small landing area. She gently tossed the album to me. I set the book aside and positioned myself directly under the ladder. I cupped my arms.

“Your turn,” I shouted.

Hesitant, a twinge of fear in her eyes, Amanda climbed to the bottom of the ladder.

“You sure you can catch me?” she said.

“As long as you don’t weigh more than eighty pounds, no problem.”

“I’ll shove an eighty-pound foot up your ass if one toe touches the ground.”

“Fair enough.”

Amanda closed her eyes and let go. She tumbled through the air, a shrill scream escaping her lips. Then she was in my arms, her hands locked around my neck. I lowered her down and she slowly opened her eyes.

“You weigh a bit more than eighty pounds,” I said.

She jabbed me in the ribs, then gave me a gentle squeeze and said, “Thanks.”

I nodded, stared into her eyes. Then the sirens broke through our embrace, shattering the moment of peace.

We jogged toward the end of the alley, then headed east on Amsterdam. We hopped on the 81st Street crosstown bus, used the transfer still good from the subway, and shielded our faces behind a discarded copy of The Onion.

Headline: Journalist Changes Name To Hieroglyphic Symbol.

From the corner of my eye I saw a police car speed down the block and make a sharp right into the alley we’d just come from. I exhaled and pointed it out to Amanda. She took my hand, squeezed my fingers until they hurt.

We got off at the last stop, 80th Street and East End Avenue. The steel blanket of night had descended. The East River was dark, the moon glimmering off the water like silver beads. A warm breeze blew through my hair as I breathed it all in. On any other night, the city’s beauty would have been a moment to savor. But tonight it felt like a tomb.

This neighborhood was unfamiliar. Rows of expensive Upper East Side apartments ran down one side of the block. Trees with knee-high guardrails and doormen with constable caps opened the door for fashionably dressed tenants and their fashionably dressed dogs.

On the other side of the street, as though exported from another, less affluent universe, sat a squat tenement that looked completely abandoned. Windows were boarded up, bricks covered in graffiti and slime. Old, wheelless bicycles were chained to a fence. A gate opened up to a small path leading up to the building’s entrance.

“So what now?” Amanda asked. She’d wrapped her arms around her delicate body, looking at me for a sign of hope. I held the album under my arm, feeling the plastic edge biting my skin, unsure of what to say, what to do.

John Fredrickson. I knew he worked for Michael DiForio. He wasn’t just “in the neighborhood” three days ago, like Luis had said. He’d gone to the Guzmans with a purpose: to retrieve this album and deliver it to Michael DiForio. With these photos, DiForio had New York in a vise. Releasing the photos would damage the city beyond repair. And losing them wasn’t an option he’d want to consider. And yet somehow there had to be a way to use the album, some way to set us free. Turn evil into good.

Again I tried to distance myself, cast away all emotion, look at it like a journalist.

Like a magic trick, a great story was one where you showed all the facts but gave away none of the secrets behind them. You offered the audience what they needed to see, wanted to hear, and nothing else. There were two groups of people out there: those who wanted me dead and those who wanted this binder and then wanted me dead. The trick was giving them both what they needed, yet making them want only what I offered.

It had to end tonight. I had no energy left, nothing else to offer Amanda in the way of solace. I was tired, cold, hungry. And finally I’d been given a small foothold that might support my weight.

I looked at the large brownstone in front of us. So strange in this neighborhood. Like one rotten head of lettuce in a well-cultivated garden. Like Henry Parker in New York.

“This has to end,” I said to Amanda. Her head dipped, her eyes coming up to meet mine. She leaned into me and I wrapped my arms around her thin waist, pulling her close.

God, I just wanted to breathe her in, hold her near me, think of nothing else but her. Amanda’s breath was warm on my cheek. I inhaled it, closed my eyes, pressed myself against her skin. When I opened them her head was on my chest. I stroked her hair and kissed her forehead. Everything will be all right…

Then she tilted her face upwards, her lips parting slightly. I leaned down and pressed my lips to hers, felt her push back. Soft and inviting, we both gave in. The hurt and pain being sucked away. For a few seconds, we were the only people in the world, and I completely lost myself in Amanda Davies. And when we finally separated, Amanda’s head falling back onto my chest, I knew it was more intimate than anything I’d ever experienced. If only it were on another night, in a different world.

Then I stepped back, opened the photo album.

“I need to finish this,” I said. She nodded. She was crying.

“I want to help.”

“No. This is my responsibility now, and mine alone. I don’t know what’s going to happen or how it’s going to end, but you can’t be a part of it. You’ve already done too much, I can’t bear the thought of endangering you any more.”

“Please,” Amanda said, tears streaking down her cheeks. She put her hand on my face, her light touch sending shivers through my body. I bit my lip, warmth spreading through me. “Henry, I’m a part of this, like it or not. Let me help you.”

I shook my head. Then I opened up the binder and removed the photo negatives. I handed them to Amanda. She took them, confused.

“If anything happens to me, give these to Jack O’Donnell. Tell him everything. He’ll know what to do.”

“I don’t understand. Why can’t I help you?”

“You already have, as much as possible, more than I ever would have expected from anyone. I can’t let you do any more.”

Amanda nodded, bit her lip.

“What about you?” she asked.

I smiled faintly, stroked her cheek gently.

“Trust me,” I said. “I’ll think of something.”