Parker 05 - The Darkness (22 page)

178

Jason Pinter

of it. And since I was partnering with Jack, he no doubt

wanted me there to take some of the small-arms fire.

I walked past Wallace's secretary. She was usually

kind to me, always with a good word, but today she

looked at me like I was marching right into the sights of

a firing squad. I could have sworn she gave me one of

those "please, don't go in there" looks usually reserved

for the girlfriend in horror movies who pleads with her

man not to go into the basement where the killer is waiting with a machete the size of a guitar.

Sadly, I could not heed her advice, and knocked on

Wallace's door.

"Who is it?" he yelled from inside.

"It's Henry," I said.

"Get the hell in here."

I gripped the doorknob, took a breath, and hoped

Wallace's machete was dull.

I opened the door to see Jack seated in front of

Wallace's desk. Wallace was not seated behind it, as per

usual. Instead he was pacing around the room while

Jack's head swiveled trying to keep pace.

Wallace looked like he'd come in to work properly

dressed, hair combed, clothes ironed. But now his graying

hair was askew, glasses crooked on his nose. And the pads

on his elbows looked like they were being worn away.

"Where the hell have you been?" Wallace said.

"Meeting with a cop about the Kaiser investigation,"

I said. "He's going to find out what he can about the guy

who might be responsible."

"That's dandy," Wallace said. "While you were out

pussyfooting with your boys in blue, did you happen

to see this?"

He walked over to his desk and picked up a copy of

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that morning's
New York Dispatch.
Wallace stomped over

to me, holding the paper much as you would a bag of dog

poop. I looked at Jack, wanted to see if he had anything

to say, but the old man sat there, head down.

Wallace handed me the paper. "Read it," he said.

I looked at the front page. Immediately my stomach

lurched up to my throat, frustration and anger welling

up inside me.

I turned to where the front page article continued, and

read the whole thing. Slowly. Word by word. Then I

closed the paper and threw it across the room, cursing

loud enough that Wallace's secretary would probably

have to apologize to whoever she was on the phone with.

"How the hell did she..." I said.

"Don't you dare ask that question," Wallace said. "It's

your job to know what goes on in this city. You handle

the crime beat. It is your duty to know every nook and

cranny of this island, from the mayor's office to the bums

who live beneath the subway. For something like this to

get past you...you must have been asleep at the wheel."

He looked at Jack, waited for a response. "Either that or

the two of you have become so narrow-minded with this

Kaiser murder and Gaines follow-up that you can't sniff

what's under your nose."

"I didn't know anything about this," I said. "Paulina...I

don't know where she got it. And I don't know which

cops she spoke to, but if you look at the article they all

spoke on condition of anonymity. I just met with my man

in the NYPD, and he's as clued in as anyone. He didn't

mention a word of this, and he doesn't keep things from

me. Not like this. Something about this piece doesn't

pass the smell test, Wallace."

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Jason Pinter

Wallace picked the newspaper back up. He held the

cover out for us both to see.

On the front page of the
Dispatch
was an enlarged

picture of what looked like a small stone, possibly a piece

of gravel, pitch-black in color with a rough texture.

The headline next to the photo read The Darkness.

The subtitle said,
The Drug That's About to Take Man-

hattan Back to the Stone Age.

25

Darkness Rising

As a deadly new drug hits the streets,

police and citizens silently fear a return

of chaos a quarter century old

Most New Yorkers did not know Kenneth Tsang.The

son of Chinese immigrants who passed away before

he graduated high school, Tsang received his MBA

from Wharton and spent most of his twenties raking

in the dough while working at two prestigious investment firms. Most New Yorkers did not know that,

despite his income,Tsang owed nearly half a million

dollars in taxes and mortgage payments, and that he

burned through his money nearly as fast as it came in.

Most NewYorkers know thatTsang was found dead

this week, his body pulverized and found floating in

the East River.What they do not know is that a balloon

marker was tied to the buoy that Tsang's body was

tethered to.They do not know that inside that balloon

were half a dozen small, black rocks, left by Tsang's

killer. These rocks were no bigger than a piece of

gravel, but each contain enough destructive power to

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Jason Pinter

clinch a plastic bag around the head of a city already

gasping for air.

Now, come with me for a moment. I have a brief

history lesson to impart upon you.

For those of us who lived through New York in the

1980s,much of the information within this article will

ring horrifyingly familiar.Let's backtrack for a minute,

about twenty-five years ago to 1984. George Orwell

would have been proud. Or terrified.

New York as we know it today did not exist.Following the oil shortage of the 1970s, the Son of Sam

murders, and an economy on the verge of chaos, the

plumbing system that was New York was about to get

hit with a cherry bomb that nearly destroyed it totally.

That cherry bomb was a new drug known to scientists as methylbenzoylecgonine. Or as it is more

commonly known, crack.

Crack first appeared on our shores in 1984. Before

that, the drug of choice was cocaine. But as cocaine

became more plentiful, prices dropped and dealers

began to lose much of their profit margin.

Poor them.

So to get back the money they were losing on coke,

they came up with a new way to profit. In a nutshell,

they used baking soda or other bases to cut the cocaine.

This increased the volume of their product while retaining the same toxicity of the drug. It was the equivalent

of taking a dollar bill, mixing it with a few pennies, and

turning it into two dollars.

By 1986, just two years after crack hit the streets,

over fifty-five thousand people were admitted to

emergency rooms around the country with crackrelated injuries (most often this was either from

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183

overdosing, or violence which was a result of the

drug trade).

For those of you who lived in New York during

that time, as I did, the effects of the crack epidemic

were as visible as a streetlamp. Crime in this city hit

highs never before seen. Murder and rape rates rose

dramatically. Cases of aggravated assault skyrocketed

from just over 60,000 in 1980 to over 91,000 by the

end of the decade. Burglaries. Larceny.Vehicle theft.

New York began to resemble less of a modern, cosmopolitan city than an outpost of Beirut.

Thankfully, this trend reversed itself in the 1990s,

and through the new millennium New York has

enjoyed its lowest crime rates per capita since the

1960s. New York was known as one of the safest big

cities in the country, and if you live here or came to

visit, you could walk down the street feeling safe.

After the atrocities of 9/11, New Yorkers banded

together to create a safer city. One that reclaimed its

place among the grandest in the world.The virus that

infected us twenty-five years ago had long been forgotten.

To my horror, though, recent developments have

proven that this virus was not extinguished, but had

rather been lying dormant, in remission, waiting for a

catalyst to revitalize its poisons.

That catalyst has finally found us.And it is not a terrorist,or a crooked financial institution.It exists in the

tiniest form possible: a small black rock.

Though the human eye might not register this tiny

specimen as anything more than a pebble, a piece of

gravel,something that might even pave a driveway,the

properties that exist within it threaten the very

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Jason Pinter

sanctity of the city we have fought so bravely to

protect.

The culprit? A simple black rock that dissolves on

your tongue as fast as a breath strip.

Nobody is quite sure where the Darkness came

from, who manufactures it, or whether this drug has

spread to other states. Crack began in primarily metropolitan cities. New York. Los Angeles. Washington,

D.C.Cities with large urban populations. Cities where

there was enough poverty to turn the need of a cheap

hit into gold for the men and women whose lack of

humanity drove them to produce it.

As of press time, the police had no leads on who

deals the drug. A high-ranking member inside the

NYPD did comment, off the record, stating,"We are

fully preparing for another epidemic similar to the

rise of crack cocaine we saw in the 1980s. Though

privately, we're worried that this one will be much,

much worse and have a potentially more devastating

impact considering that our infrastructure is already

damaged."

So what's the harm in a little black rock, you might

ask? Why should I care about some idiots getting high?

Because increases in drug production and consumption lead to increases in crime.But here's where

this drug differs: a normal crack user will find successive hits of the drug granting decreasing effects.The

hits, as they are, are not as potent.

With the Darkness,however,some insane chemical

genius has figured out a way around this.

The human brain produces a certain amount of

dopamine, a neurotransmitter often associated with

pleasure.Dopamine is released through many pleasur-
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185

able experiences, including food, exercise, sex and, of

course, drugs. Simple crack cocaine releases a larger

amount of dopamine than the brain is accustomed to,

so when the user takes a second hit before the brain

can replenish dopamine, a lesser amount is released.

Yet the Darkness circumvents this by causing the

brain to produce more dopamine. This means that

each successive hit will have the exact same impact

as the one preceding it,making it more addictive than

nearly every drug on the market.

It's no wonder the cops are nervous.They're facing

streets about to be teeming with a drug that's cheaper,

more plentiful, and delivers, pardon the expression,

the best hit money can buy.

God help us all.

26

Friday

The call came close to midnight. Morgan wondered

what the hell had taken them so long.

He didn't recognize the voice on the other line. It wasn't

Chester, and he didn't think it was Leonard. Not that it

mattered much. He assumed there had to be more to the

operation than the two guys he'd met. There were twelve

other men in that room--well, eleven after the accident

with Jeremy--and they'd all been recruited like him.

Leonard had said that they'd each been recruited by a

different person, as Leonard had been brought in by this

guy Stephen Gaines. If each new recruit was brought in

by a different guy, a la Chester, that meant at least eleven

people on Chester's level.

Morgan wondered just how many people were a part

of this organization. Then he wondered how long it might

take before he could be promoted, and how much money

he'd have to bring in. Didn't matter. He'd do it.

In his mind's eye, Morgan could see Jeremy's lifeless

body sliding down the wall, clumps of his blood like egg

yolk on the wallpaper behind him. Morgan wished he felt

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187

remorseful, wished he felt some sort of sympathy for

Jeremy, but as hard as he tried he simply could not.

When Leonard described what the job entailed, it

was a zero sum equation: either you had the sack for it

or you didn't.

Jeremy didn't.

It was clear from the moment the mission was explained. Morgan had seen that look before. He found it a

little funny, considering he'd gone so far in business

because of his ability to spot men like Jeremy. Men who

wouldn't take the extra step, who worried so much about

teetering on the diving board that they couldn't even see

the riches hidden beneath the water's surface.

Morgan saw it all. He had a knack for it, could see

deals before they materialized. That was the rule of

thumb: first one in, last one out. See the profits before

everyone else did, and stay longer than everyone else

who got cold feet.

That look in Leonard's eye said it all. New product.