The Mark

  JASON PINTER

  THE MARK

  For Susan

  I only hope my words fill these pages

  like you fill my heart

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Epilogue

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank:

  —Joe Veltre, who supported this book from the beginning, offered invaluable insight and found the perfect home for it. An agent I can truly call both a friend and a consigliere.

  —Linda McFall, who has been the kind of editor every author dreams of: encouraging, indefatigable and patient to no end. Because of you The Mark is a better book and I’m a better author (not to mention a preferred customer at 1-800-FLOWERS).

  —Donna Hayes, Dianne Moggy, Margaret O’Neill Marbury, Craig Swinwood, Loriana Sacilotto, Stacy Widdrington, Maureen Stead, Katherine Orr, Marleah Stout, Cris Jaw, Ana Movileanu, Rebecca Soukis and everyone else at MIRA Books who got behind The Mark and published it with a passion and intelligence second to none.

  —The authors who donated their invaluable time to reading advance copies of The Mark and offering truly humbling words of praise.

  —The readers and booksellers who continue their passionate support of the literary industry, and were brave enough to invite a first-time novelist to tell them a story or two.

  —Rick Wolff, Rick Horgan, Jamie Raab, Carrie Thornton, Steve Ross, Kristin Kiser and all my colleagues at Hachette Book Group and Crown Publishers who allowed me the privilege of working on both sides of the desk.

  —M.J. Rose and Sarah Weinman. If there are two people out there who are more generous, love books as much, and do more for the industry, I’d like to meet them.

  —Brett Battles, J. T. Ellison, Sandra Ruttan and the rest of the Killer Year crew. Great friends and partners in crime. I hope 2007 is full of all the murder, mystery and mayhem we hoped for.

  —Clark Blaise. Keep on truckin’.

  —Mom, Dad and Ali. Thank you for your never-ending love and support, I’m not a good enough writer to properly express my gratitude. Every day my eyes open more to the unflagging love and support you’ve shown my whole life.

  —Susan. My life. My love. My inspiration. I can’t imagine where I would be without you (though it would probably involve bumping into walls while wearing mismatched clothing). I am the luckiest man in the world, and I will spend the rest of my life trying to make you as proud and happy as you make me.

  Prologue

  R ight as I was about to die, I realized that none of the myths about death were true. There was no white light at the end of a tunnel. My life didn’t flash before my eyes. There were no singing angels, no thousand virgins, and my soul didn’t hover and admire my body from above. I was only aware of one thing, and that was how much I wanted to live.

  I watched the shotgun, moonlight glinting off its oily black barrel. The stench of death was thick. The air smelled of cordite, ripe and strong, blood and rot choking the room as everything grew dark around me. My panicked eyes leapt to the body at my feet, and I saw the spent shells scattered in a spreading pool of rich, red blood.

  My blood.

  There were two other men alive in this room. I’d met them each once before.

  Five minutes ago I thought I had the story figured out. I knew these men both wanted me dead, knew their reasons for desiring my death were vastly different.

  On one man’s face burned a hatred so personal, just looking at him felt like the grim reaper had come for me. The other man held a cold, blank, businesslike stare, as though my life was merely a timecard waiting to be punched. And I couldn’t help but think…

  Human emotion was formerly an obsession of mine.

  Guilt.

  Passion.

  Love.

  Courage.

  Lust.

  And fear.

  In my twenty-four years of life, I’d experienced them time and time again.

  Experienced everything but fear. And over the last three days, all the fear I owed the house had been paid back in spades.

  Traversing the black and white of human emotion was my passion, finding the gray between was my calling. Seeking out man’s limits and limitations and conveying them to the masses, it was my insulin. I moved to New York because I was given the chance to experience these emotions on a grander scale than I ever imagined. Here I had a chance to uncover the greatest stories never told.

  The bullet in my chest sent cold sparks rippling down my spine. The right side of my body was numb, every breath felt like I was sipping mud through a crushed straw. When the slug entered me, tearing through my flesh, my body sent flying like a broken puppet, I expected to feel a blinding pain. White searing heat. Waves of agony that crashed against my body like vengeful surf. But the pain didn’t come.

  Instead I was left with the terrifying sensation that there was no sensation at all.

  As I lay dying, I tried to imagine the precious moments I might lose if that black muzzle fired again, its orange flame illuminating the darkness, death traveling so fast my world would end before the realization even hit me.

  Was I meant to have a family? A bigger apartment than the shitty, overpriced rental, now with crime-scene tape crossing the door? Was I meant to have children? A boy or a girl? Maybe both? Would I raise them in the city, where I so eagerly arrived just a few months ago?

  Maybe I’d grow old and get sick, die of natural causes. Maybe I’d step out from the curb in front of Radio City Music Hall and get hit by a double-decker bus filled with tourists, digital cameras snapping pictures of my mangled body as a bicycle cop directed traffic around my chalk outline.

  But no. Here I was, Henry Parker, twenty-four years old, weary beyond rational thought, a bullet mere inches from shattering a life that had seemingly just begun.

  And if the truth dies with me tonight, I know many more will die as well, lives that could have been saved, if only…

  I can’t run. Running is all I’ve done the past seventy-two hours. And it all ends tonight.

  My body shakes, every twitch involuntary. The man in black, his face etched in granite, grips the shotgun and says two words. And I know I’m about to die.

  “For Anne.”

  I don’t know Anne. But I’m about to die for her. And for the first time since it began three days ago, I have nowhere to run.

  I want my life back. I want to find Amanda. Please, let it end. I’m tired of running. Tired of knowing the truth and not being able to tell it. Just give me the chance to tell the story.

  I promise it will be worth it.

  1

  One month ago

 
I watched my reflection in the doors as the elevator rose to the twelfth floor. My suit had been steamed, pressed and tailored. My tie, shoes and belt matched perfectly. I nervously eyed Wallace Langston, the older man standing next to me. My brown hair was neatly combed, the posture on my six-one frame ramrod straight. I’d bought a book on prepping for your first day at a new job. On the cover was an attractive twenty-something whose dentistry probably cost more than my college tuition.

  Security downstairs had given me a temporary ID. Not yet a member of the fraternity, still a pledge who had to prove his worth.

  “Make sure you have your picture taken before the week’s up,” the husky security guard with huge, red-rimmed glasses and a personality-enhancing cheek mole told me. “If you don’t, I gotta run you through the system every day. And I have better things to do than run it through the system every goddamn day. You get me?”

  I nodded, assured her I’d have the photo taken as soon as I got upstairs. And I meant it. I wanted my face on a Gazette ID as fast as the lab could develop it. I’d take it to Kinkos myself if they were backed up.

  When the doors opened, Wallace led me across a foyer with beige carpeting, past a secretary’s desk with the words New York Gazette in big, bold letters mounted on the wall. I showed her my temporary ID. She smiled with an open mouth and chewed her gum.

  Wallace pressed his keycard against a reader and opened the glass doors. As soon as the silence was broken, I thought how strange it was that all my hopes and dreams were embedded in one beautiful noise.

  To an outsider, the noise might seem incessant, cacophonous, but to me it was as calm and natural as an honest laugh. Hundreds of fingers were pounding away, the soothing rattle of popping keys and scribbling pencils drawing a smile across my lips. Dozens of eyes, all staring at lighted screens with type the size of microorganisms, reading faxes and e-mails sent from all over the world, faces contorted as though the telephone was a human they could emote to. Some people were yelling, some softly whispering. If I hadn’t clenched my jaw trying to project confidence, it would have hit the floor like I’d stepped into a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

  “This is the newsroom,” Wallace said. “Your desk is over there.” He pointed to the one unoccupied metal swivel chair among the sea of tattered felt, showing how every day I would be wading through greatness. Soon I’d be seated at that desk, computer on, phone in my hand, fingers rattling at the keyboard like Beethoven on Red Bull.

  I was home.

  If you’re in media or entertainment, New York is your mecca. Athletes count the days until their debut at Madison Square Garden. For classical pianists, Carnegie Hall is their holy ground. Professional stripper—sorry, exotic dancer—yeah, New York is their Jerusalem, too.

  It was no coincidence, then, that this was my holy land. The newsroom of the New York Gazette. Rockefeller Plaza, New York City. I’d come a long, long way to get here.

  I briefly wondered what the hell a twenty-four-year-old with little more on his résumé than the Bend Bulletin, was doing here, but this was everything I’d worked for. What I was destined for. Wallace knew what I was capable of. Ever since my first page-one story in the Bulletin, the one that was syndicated in over fifty papers around the world, Wallace had been following me. When he heard I was accepted to Cornell’s prestigious journalism program, he made the three-and-a-half-hour drive to take me out for lunch. And during my senior year, before I could even start to look for jobs, Wallace made me an offer to join the Gazette full-time.

  The newsroom needs some new blood, he’d said. Young, ambitious kid like you, show the skeptics out there that thenext generation has its head on straight. There are other papers in this city, but if you want to chase down real stories instead of celebrities on vacation, you’ll make the right choice. Make your mark, Henry. Make it with us. Plus, our first-year salary is five grand higher.

  I drank three bottles of champagne that night, and passed out in John Derringer’s shower with a Bic mustache and sideburns.

  I felt Wallace’s hand against my suit jacket. I hoped he didn’t press too hard—my threads probably cost less than Wallace’s haircuts. Yet though Wallace was my professional benefactor, the top shelf on my wall of professional hero worship was permanently occupied. That man was seated just a few feet away. But as far as being indebted to a person, right after my mother giving birth, Wallace hiring me was a close second.

  We snaked through the skewed chairs and cups of cold coffee, past writers who were too busy to tuck their chairs in. This was how they worked. I loved it. I knew not to interrupt a reporter on deadline, and sure as hell didn’t expect them to move. I was here to purify the blood of the newsroom, not to disrupt its flow.

  I recognized some of the writers. I’d read their work, knew to look for their bylines. It was scary to think of them as my new colleagues. Not to mention how seldom they appeared to shave or shower.

  I wanted them to respect me, needed them to respect me. But for now I was just a mark. A newbie. The guy all eyes would be on to see if he produced.

  And then I saw him. Jack O’Donnell. Then Wallace pulled me forward and I remembered to breathe.

  As we walked by, I let my hand swipe O’Donnell’s Oxford blue shirt sleeve. A silent brush with greatness. I couldn’t have been any less subtle than if I’d taken out his latest book, asked for an autograph, then smacked him across the face with it. Talk to him later, I told myself. Follow him to the bathroom. To lunch. Offer to shine his shoes, raise his kids, whatever.

  Man. Jack O’Donnell.

  Five years ago, if someone had said I’d be working fifteen feet from Jack I’d have kicked his ass for mocking me. A few years ago, Jack O’Donnell was profiled in the New Yorker. I had a copy of the article at home. I taped one page above my desk, underlined one quote, the quote that threaded its way through every story I ever wrote.

  News is the DNA of our society. It shapes how we think, how we act, how we feel. It dictates who we are and who we become. We are all beneficiaries—and byproducts—of information.

  Many people, myself included, credited the first injection of this strand of DNA to William Randolph Hearst. Hearst took over the San Francisco Examiner in 1887 at the tender age of twenty-three. The only guy who made me feel lazy.

  Hearst was the first to truly sensationalize print media, splashing his newspapers with big, bold headlines and lavish illustrations. Conspiracy mongers blamed Hearst for inciting the Spanish-American war with his constant editorializing on the Spanish government’s civil rights atrocities. As Hearst reportedly said to illustrator Frederic Remington, “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.”

  Since then, it almost seems like journalism has taken a step backward. The scandal at the New York Times proved that. Some people laughed it off as an isolated incident. Others who knew their stories couldn’t hold up to scrutiny quietly updated their résumés. And I followed the whole thing shaking my head, trembling in anger, wanting to shake up the system.

  And if Jack’s quote was accurate—as I believed it to be—when that blood became tainted, it could spread disease through every capillary of society. Liars and fabricators and egos the size of Donald Trump were popping up like rats in the subway, from men and women who were supposed to report the stories, not be the stories.

  Just last week, a junior reporter at the Washington Post came to work jacked on amphetamines, two pots of coffee, with a deadline in six hours for a thousand-word story he hadn’t written a sentence for. He cranked out the piece then returned home, punched his girlfriend, and took a header out of their fifth-story walk-up. Just more fuel for the fire.

  I wanted to be the antidote, to pick up Jack O’Donnell’s mantle, polish the surface and carry it with pride. I wanted to extract the venom that had poisoned journalism, to bring some credibility back to the newsroom in the wake of these lies. Jack O’Donnell had given me an unbreakable faith in what a good reporter could accomplish. And now here I was, within coughing distance of the
legend himself. Time to put up or shut up, Henry.

  After bobbing and weaving through jackets slung over chair backs and pens rolling along the floor like plastic dust bunnies, we arrived at my desk, a smile on my face as if it were opening day at Yankee freakin’ Stadium. My desk was right by the window, overlooking the veranda that in the winter became Woolman rink. Prime real estate, baby. I could watch the multilingual tourists snapping away at the beautiful golden sculptures and international flags, people gazing at the fair city as though they never knew such architecture and panache existed. Sunlight poured over my workstation, glowing off the fresh-scrubbed walls, and I couldn’t help but feel blessed.

  “Welcome to your new home,” Wallace said. “Comes fully stocked with, well, everything you see here.”

  “Any assembly required?” I asked.

  Wallace leaned in, whispered, “Some of the old-timers, I guess you can count myself in there, keep a flask in their desk.” I didn’t know what to say. Was he serious? Wallace laughed, clapped me on the back. “You’ll fit in just fine.”

  He leaned over and tapped the shoulder of the woman whose workstation was adjacent to mine. She spun around, her swivel chair well-oiled and squeak-free, and glowered at me. She was slim, blond and quite attractive. Late thirties, early forties, with a “what the hell do you want?” look on her face so convincing I couldn’t help but think she practiced it in the mirror. She wore a pink tank top and black Capri pants, her hair pulled back into a ponytail. No wedding ring. And from the looks of it, no bra. If Mya asked what my co-workers looked like, I’d have to lie.