The Fury

21

I spent the rest of the night rereading Through the

Darkness. It had been several years since I'd last read it, and the sense of awe I gained by reading Jack's work was tempered by the sudden knowledge that a forgot ten passage from the book was somehow relevant to two murders today.

Most of the book came back to me, like seeing a good friend after a long absence. Amanda woke up, kissed me on the cheek and left for work, knowing how important this was. There were no other explicit refer ences to the Fury, no other mention of who it was, or whether or not he or she even existed. People say some strange things when they've been shot in the head.

I opened up the search engine on my computer and looked for any old interviews Jack had done for the book. Unfortunately most had either not been archived digitally or they'd been lost, because only two came up.

Neither mentioned the Fury in any way.

Working at the Gazette, Jack's presence was missed on a daily basis. Now, his absence felt like a hole in my stomach, an emptiness. I needed to talk to him, to see what he knew, what he remembered. But Jack was re covering from his own battle with alcohol, and I couldn't bring myself to interrupt that. There was one person, though, who might be able to help. Thankfully he worked long hours, and started the day early.

Wallace Langston picked up on the second ring.

"Henry," he said. "I was wondering when next I'd hear from you. You do still work here, right?"

"How are you, Wallace?" I figured I'd ignore the question.

"I'm doing well. Henry, what's up? Or did you just call to make sure I'd had my morning coffee?"

"Actually, that's why I called," I said. " Seriously, I need some help. Listen, Wallace, I need to ask you a question. It's about Jack."

There was a moment of hesitation on the other end.

"What is it?" Wallace said curtly.

"I'd rather we talk face-to-face. It's not about my job or the paper. You can say no if you want…but I need to know. It's kind of personal."

"My door's always open, Henry. As long as you're honest with me about what you want and why you need it."

"You have my word. I'll be there in forty-five minutes."

I was putting on my shoes before I even heard the dial tone.

The newsroom was loud, boisterous.

I heard Frank Rourke shouting at someone over the phone, something about a report that the Knicks were about to can their coach. I heard Evelyn Waterstone chewing out a reporter who'd misspelled the word borough on his story. All of these sounds make me smile. Who would have thought this kind of chaos could be an antidote to everything that had been going on?

I made my way down the hall, toward Wallace's office.

"Henry, what's shakin', my man?"

I turned slowly, eyes closed, my stomach already feeling sick. Tony Valentine was standing in the hallway, a goofy grin on his face. At first something looked different about him, then I noticed how unnatu rally smooth his forehead looked. And not many people could smile without creating smile lines. I wondered if he had a Botox expense account as part of his salary package.

"Listen, Parker, I got something for you. I know you've got a girlfriend-don't we all? But there's this actress… can't tell you her name, but it rhymes with

Bennifer Maniston. She's a good friend of mine and she's in town for a few days. I was thinking the two of you could go out to dinner. Nothing special or fancy, but tomorrow it's in my column. You get great press for ca noodling with a star, she gets good press for dating a nice young reporter who won't ditch her for a costar. Sound good? Say the word and you've got reservations for two at Babbo."

I stared at Tony for a minute, then said, "Goodbye."

I turned around and headed for Wallace's office.

He was sitting down, elbows on his desk, papers splayed out in front of him. "Henry, sit down," he said.

The last few months had been tough on Wallace. Jack's departure had hit the paper hard, but Wallace person ally. Harvey Hillerman, the publisher of the Gazette, had been eyeing the bottom line closer than ever.

Whether Jack had lost a few miles of his fastball was to some extent irrelevant. He still brought readers to the paper, and he knew New York City better than anyone alive. His name off the masthead hurt our readership, bit into our circulation and took a bite from our adver tising revenue. There was no replacing him. We were all praying for his recovery, but Wallace was praying for more than that. He needed Jack for the paper. For his job. For all our jobs, in a way.

I envisioned myself as the kind of reporter who could ease the Gazette into the next generation, but I never saw that happening without Jack. He wasn't someone who simply disappeared. He had to leave on his own terms, when he was ready.

And having known Jack for a few years, having gotten close enough to him for the man to confide in me,

I knew that before his battle with the bottle nearly killed him and his reputation, he had no desire to go quietly into that good night.

"Thanks again for seeing me."

"No problem," he said. "My door is always open."

I laughed. "So I wanted to talk about Jack. Specifi cally something he wrote a long time ago."

"Shoot."

"It wasn't for the paper."

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."