Parker 04 - The Fury (23 page)

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."

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Jason Pinter

"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."

22

The subway was hot and humid as I went back uptown.

I had no idea how long it would take for Wallace to get

me those files. The man had been gracious enough to

offer, and frankly I didn't expect much going in. I des

perately wanted to know what Jack knew, what else he

knew about the Willingham murder. And what, if

anything, it had to do with Stephen Gaines.

The strange thing was, the deeper I looked into this,

the further away it seemed to go from Gaines. From him

to Beth-Ann Downing, from Rose Keller to Butch Wil

lingham, there seemed to be a pattern of behavior that

went back twenty years. I had no idea how long, if at

all, my brother had been dealing. But I was damn sure

that it had somehow gotten him killed.

Now, I've read the books. I've seen the TV shows. I

read as much news as I can take until my eyeballs hurt.

I'm well aware that pushing is not a profession made

for duration. People get into it hoping to make a quick

buck, usually because they have no other options. They

have neither the education to get a job punching a clock,

nor the desire to work for a corporation that can termi

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nate them without a moment's notice. There was some

thing romantic about the notion of a drug dealer, some

thing that went against the system. But when I saw

Stephen Gaines that night on the street, I did not see a

man defiant in the face of unspeakable odds stacked

against him. I saw a defeated, emaciated, broken-down

young man. A man scared of something. Something he

felt, for some reason, I could help with.

I was a newspaper reporter. Nothing more, nothing

less. I sincerely doubted Gaines came to me because I

was his flesh and blood. He'd had years to try to reach

out. He came to me because something about my pro

fession, my line of work, could have helped him, thrown

him a lifeline.

I sat down, my butt immediately becoming stuck to

the seat by a clear substance I hadn't seen before. The

joys of traveling on the MTA. Unfolding that morning's

copy of the
Gazette,
I put all thoughts of Gaines and

Willingham out of my mind until I got home. Perhaps

good old-fashioned newspaper reporting would help

me out. Clear my mind.

But when I saw the story on page eleven, I nearly

threw up.

Man, 27, Shot to Death in His Apartment

A photo accompanied the article. I recognized the

man in the shot. I'd seen him just recently.

It was the guy whose briefcase I'd stolen. He was

found last night, murdered, shot twice in the back of the

head.

23

I couldn't think of any words. My mouth was dry, my

head throbbing. Amanda and I were sitting in a cold

room in the Twenty-eighth Precinct on Eighth Avenue

between 122d and 123d streets. On the table in front of

us were several items: an empty briefcase, several

thousand dollars' worth of various types of narcotics;

and one cell phone.

The man's name was Hector Guardado. He was

twenty-seven years old. Lived alone in Spanish Harlem.

According to police reports, Hector had less than a

thousand dollars in his bank account. But upon search

ing his apartment, they found nearly fifty thousand

dollars in cash stuffed underneath a fake floorboard in

his kitchen.

Hector was not some young kid with no education

dealing to make ends meet. He had an MBA. A freaking

business degree. Yet despite the degree, despite the

hundred thousand dollars he spent to attain it, Hector

Guardado had not been able to find employment since

returning to New York City, his hometown.

The other day I'd stolen Hector's briefcase to learn

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more about his dealings, to learn more about this group

of misfits that my brother may or may not have been a

part of. And now the man was dead, murdered in cold

blood. Another young man killed like a piece of meat,

shot twice in the back of the head, surely by someone

who knew him.

Because of that, I called Amanda the moment I got

out of the subway. Stopping at the apartment first to pick

up the briefcase and its contents, I headed straight for

the police. No more clandestine detective work. No

more hiding my hand until all the cards were dealt. A

life had been taken.

It made me sick to my stomach to think that Hector

Guardado's life might have been taken because of his

stolen briefcase, but two days ago he was alive. Two

days ago the briefcase, along with the drugs and his cell

phone, were in his possession.

And now today he was dead, and the drugs were

in police custody. I wasn't willing to write it off as a

coincidence.

"You okay?" Amanda asked. I didn't nod. I wasn't

the one on a slab somewhere, or being written about in

the newspaper. She seemed to get this, because she

didn't ask again.

Soon the door opened and a familiar face walked in:

Detective Sevi Makhoulian.

Makhoulian sat down in a chair across from us.

Looked me over, then looked at the items on the table.

He took a pair of rubber gloves from his pocket, spread

open the black folds of the suitcase and peered in.

"This everything?"

I nodded.

The Fury

197

"And this was all in Guardado's possession when

you took it from him."

I nodded again. "You can fingerprint it," I said. "I

never touched the stuff." I nudged Amanda slightly with

my elbow, giving her a silent thanks for the advice.

Makhoulian sighed and leaned back in his chair. He

folded his arms behind his head as though deciding

what to watch on television. He didn't look the least bit

concerned with anything.

"What are you going to do?" I asked.

"Frankly," he said, "I'm not sure yet. Unfortunately

we can't charge you with theft, because Mr. Guardado

would have been our only witness, and frankly it would

be a waste of time. Because, though I don't know you

that well, anytime a person willingly brings half a pound

of weed, a fourth of a kilo of cocaine and enough crack

rocks to keep Flavor Flav's teeth chattering for a year,

they're not the ones using it."

"We're not," Amanda said. "We weren't."

Makhoulian nodded, then thumbed his lip. "Look,

Parker, I know you think your father is innocent. If I was

in your shoes, I'd want to do anything I could to help

him, too. And if he is innocent, he'll be found as such

by a jury of his peers."

"The case hasn't even gone to the grand jury yet,"

Amanda spat.

"True, but we all know that's a mere formality. We

have his fingerprints. We have his receipts from his trip

to New York. And we have a motive."

"Does the name Butch Willingham ring a bell?" I

asked suddenly.

Makhoulian looked confused. Said, "No, why?"

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I believed him. "Nothing," I said. "Just a guy who

was killed a long time ago."

"And you bring it up, why, as a brainteaser?"

"I'm not sure why," I said. "Just wondering if I'm the

only one who thinks there's a lot more to this than a

simple case of a guy murdering his son. Since, you

know, another young man was just killed in the same

manner as Stephen Gaines."

"The investigation into the death of Hector Guardado

is under way," Sevi said. "You're a reporter, Henry,

right? Can you tell me how many murders were com

mitted in New York City last year?"

"Not the exact number, but I believe it was under

five hundred."

"Four hundred and ninety-two," Makhoulian said.

His eyes were riveted on mine. This was not a history

lesson or an attempt to belittle my knowledge. "Now,

first of all, that was the lowest number of murders com

mitted in Manhattan in over forty years. First time it's

been under five hundred since 1963, to be precise. Thing

is, even though that's low for our standards, that's still

an awful lot of homicides. Now, think about that word.

Homicide.
These four hundred ninety-two people were

killed by someone else. They didn't step into open

elevator shafts or pee on the third rail. They were killed.

Murdered. Now, you are a reporter. So it's part of your

job to report crimes that are extraordinary. Like Sharon

Dombrowski, the elderly woman on Spring Street who

was so convinced she was being targeted by a robber

that she hooked up an electric cable to her door, so

when her poor landlord came by to check on a leak and

knocked he was electrocuted to death. Or Percy

The Fury

199

Whitmore who bought a studio in Little Italy using a

loan from his father. Only when he didn't repay in time,

Percy's dad came over and smacked his son across the

face so hard ol' Percy fell and cracked his skull open on

his bookshelf. Accidental? Maybe. But homicides

nonetheless."

"What's your point?" I said.

"See, you write about these instances because they're

one in a million. Like a shark attack, they're so

gruesome and out of the ordinary that people want to

hear about them just like how they slow down when

passing a car wreck. What doesn't get that press are the

boring murders. The two taps to the back of the head."

Makhoulian mimicked pointing a gun to his cranium,

cocking his trigger finger twice to illustrate the shots.

"You know how many of those nearly five hundred

murders were the result of gunshot wounds? Four

hundred and twenty-eight. Now, I'm not a mathemati

cian, but that's somewhere between eighty and ninety

percent. So you're going to come in here and tell me,

definitively,
that these two murders are the result of

some vast conspiracy that I'm too dumb to see?"

"I'm not saying you're dumb. But Hector called my

brother that night."

"According to Verizon, the phone call lasted eight

seconds. You know how long eight seconds is? Long

enough to realize you've dialed the wrong number before

you hang up. There are no other records of these two

having ever corresponded, no other calls between the

two."

"You don't see these killings as two pieces to--"

"Pieces my ass, you're reading too much James

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Ellroy. Know what they teach us in the academy? The

rule of
lex parsimoniae.
Since I'm guessing you're not

exactly fluent, what the Latin translates to is 'entities

must not be multiplied beyond necessity.' Boil down the

translation, what that means is if a man is murdered, and

the fingerprints on the gun belong to someone he

knows, who has access to him, and who has a
motive

to kill him, I'd be willing to bet my badge, my wife, my

mortgage and my iPhone you put that killer in cell block