Parker 04 - The Fury (22 page)

pers began to grow about a man presumably re

sponsible for the carnage, a ghost whose identity

nobody could confirm, and details about whom

nobody would (or could) go on the record about.

In fact, the only evidence there was to this

man's existence at all was at the murder scene of

one Butch Willingham. Willingham had been shot

twice in the back of the head. The wounds were

catastrophic, though miraculously, neither bullet

was instantaneously fatal.

The autopsy concluded that Willingham had

lived between five to ten minutes after the shoot

ings, though the terminal damage to his brain pre

vented him from moving, speaking or doing

anything to save his own life.

Apparently the bullets did not completely de

prive Willingham of all of his motor skills during

that brief period he remained alive, because while

Willingham lay dying, his skull shattered by the

The Fury

183

slugs, he scribbled two macabre words on the

floor of his apartment, using only the blood leak

ing from his own body.

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 Unfortunately most had either not been archived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

The Fury

185

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

186

Jason Pinter

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

The Fury

187

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

188

Jason Pinter

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?"

The Fury

189

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

190

Jason Pinter

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 informa

The Fury

191

tion 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