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.'
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 terminate 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.
