now-infamous suitcase and found a clean shirt. My cell phone was on the floor. I picked it up, noticed I had a message. It was from Wallace Langston. My heart sped up as I listened, a surge within me as a ray of hope appeared.
'Henry, it's Wallace. I have those files you wanted.
Let me know how you want to get them. Call me. Hope you're okay.'
I immediately called him back, Wallace's office picking up on the first ring. His secretary connected me.
It was great to hear the editor in chief's voice.
'Henry, how are you?' he said. 'I was beginning to worry.'
'About me? Why?'
'If you've given me one reason not to worry about your safety in the time we've known each other, I'm not aware of it.'
'I'll try harder.'
'So I have Jack's files,' he said. 'Of course, there could be more at his home, but this is everything he kept at the office pertaining to Through the Darkness. They'll be here waiting for you. They're in my office for the time being.'
'Wallace, you're a lifesaver. With any luck this will shed some light on this Fury thing and help get my dad out. And when it's all over, I think there might be a hell of a story.'
'I was hoping you might say that,' Wallace said,
'And frankly, if there wasn't, we'd need to have a serious chat about all this 'personal time' you've been taking. So in case I'm not here, I'll make sure you have access to my office.'
'You know,' I said, 'is there any chance you could have them messengered over?'
'Why?' Wallace asked.
'Something happened last night, let's just say I need to stay out of sight for a little while.'
'What the hell did you do, Henry?' I could sense the frustration in his voice.
'Nothing. Really. It should all blow over soon.'
'Spoken like someone who has no idea what he's in for.'
'Please, Wallace,' I said.
'Fine,' he sighed. 'I think I have your address some where in my Rolodex here…'
'Actually, I need them sent to a different address.'
'Okay, where to?'
'It's on the notepad here, one sec.'
'On the notepad?' Wallace asked. 'Where the hell are you, a bar?'
'Not exactly. But on that note, there's one more thing…if this does lead to a story, I might need to talk to you about extending my expense account for a few days. Oh, and I'm staying under the name Leonard
Denton.'
'Henry,' Wallace said, 'what the hell have you gotten yourself into?'
I had an hour before the files were to arrive, so I went downstairs and found a deli where I bought a bagel with cream cheese and a bran muffin with two large coffees for breakfast. I could almost feel Wallace's hair turn a deeper shade of gray when I told him where we were staying, but there was a chance if a story came out of all of this that the Gazette would pick up the tab.
Since I might have to resort to selling locks of my hair if the charges remained on my credit card, I hoped for my sake and theirs that one would emerge.
When I got back to the room, Amanda had showered and was wearing a pair of jeans and a tank top. She was sitting out on the balcony, the breeze whipping through her hair, a glass of water on the edge of the lounge chair.
She turned her head to look at me, smiled.
'This is kind of nice,' she said. 'Maybe we should move in here.'
'I'll go buy some lottery tickets.'
'Sit down,' she said. 'Stay a while.'
We ate on the balcony, the skyscrapers of Times
Square surrounding us. When the coffee was done, I went inside and brewed another pot from the instant machine and we had seconds. It might have been the greatest breakfast I ever had.
When we finished, the phone rang from inside. I picked it up. It was the front desk. A package had arrived for me.
I went downstairs and signed for the package, a large, bulky padded folder with Wallace's messy handwriting.
A minor miracle it didn't end up somewhere in Antigua.
I brought the package upstairs, cleaned off the bed spread and laid out all the papers in front of me. There were reams of pages, half a dozen thick notebooks filled to the brim. This is what Jack had worked with while writing one of the seminal books of his generation on crime. Just looking at these old pages brought a smile to my face and courage to my heart.
And with those in mind, I began to read.
Amanda stayed in the living room, watching something on television at a low volume. I was perched on the bed amidst a mess of files, trying my best to keep them in order.
From the smell of the pages I could sense that nobody had gone through them in some time. No need to, until now.
I knew that wherever he was, Jack would approve.
The amount of research and notes Jack took was staggering. Through the Darkness was forty-two chapters long, and these pages only touched on twelve of them. Jack had transcriptions of interviews with dozens of people, from street dealers to middlemen, to cops and politicians, to local residents who'd witnessed their streets regress from thriving neighborhoods into third world countries.
He'd looked at this story from every angle. And I would have killed to be able to discuss it with him.
Some of the statistics Jack had uncovered were stag gering, and in the years since the book was published they could have only grown more bleak.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, over four million people in the United States had used crack cocaine at some point in their life, including nearly five percent of all high-school students. The drug was used primarily by men over the age of twenty-five. The typical user was African-American, aged twenty-eight, with an income at or below the poverty line.
The main reason, Jack had written, that crack cocaine had become so prevalent was due to its relative cheap ness to manufacture, as well as the immediate high it produced. An eight ball, or an eighth of an ounce of rock, cost about thirty dollars depending on where it was pur chased.
According to Jack's interviews, a surprising number of people would actually cook the mixture themselves rather than buy it ready-made, simply due to monetary concerns. It was cheaper to be your own chemist than go to the store. It was carried and sold in everything from glass vials to cellophane to tinfoil, even the rolls people generally used for coins. It was most predomi nant in larger cities with more densely populated urban areas, such as Los Angeles, New York, Baltimore and
Chicago.
It was also surprising to note that in interviews with nearly twenty dealers, Jack was unable to find one person who actually used the drug.
Flipping through the pages, I came upon an interview with Butch Willingham that Jack had apparently con ducted just weeks before Willingham was killed. Wil lingham denied ever using the drug, and in fact said that anyone who did was frowned upon. Jack had pressed in the interview:
BW: People who smoke don't do their jobs. They sit around all day acting stupid. They ain't out there making money. They ain't out there selling product. This a business, man. Isn't one of the first rules of business to always get rid of the bottom ten percent?
JO: I've heard that before:
BW: See, in our line of work, that's more like twenty-five percent. Figure ten percent get stoned, take themselves out of the game. Another ten per cent get busted.
JO: And the other five percent?
