The Darkness hp-5 Page 19

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Paulina might have beaten us to the story, but I don’t think she got the full story. Not even close. If the Fury exists, he came to power in the eighties, right around the time the crack epidemic was strangling the life out of

  New York. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.”

  “Go on,” I said. I felt that familiar rush.

  “Twenty years later, your brother is killed. Then this guy Ken Tsang is killed. Both around the same age, both likely somewhere on the totem pole in the drug game. And then Paulina’s article about this new drug, the Darkness, gets printed. Two dealers killed. A new drug hitting the streets. I think this person was instrumental during the eighties, and is now taking it to a whole new level.”

  “History repeats itself,” I said. “But this isn’t the same city as it was twenty years ago. I mean, between Giuliani and 9/11, you can’t argue that we’re not more secure.”

  “Security is all relative,” Jack said. “When the economy takes a turn for the worse, especially when it nosedives like it has, it breeds crime and corruption. They’re both sides of the same coin. You get one you get the other. You know the expression, ‘can’t see the forest for the trees,’ right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Right now, this city is staring at the forest. It’s looking at the big picture. Terrorism, biohazards, all noble and important things to be watching out for. In the eighties and nineties, we didn’t have to worry about things like that. So guys like Giuliani, Ray Kelly and Bill Bratton could look at it from the street level, the trees. There’s a reason Fortysecond Street looks like Walt Disney threw up all over it and not like hooker paradise anymore. Twenty years ago, the cops could look at the city through a microscope.

  Nowadays, they need to look at it via satellite. And when you look at things from a macro perspective, when you’re looking at rooftops and airplanes, you miss the rat holes.

  Beneath our noses, there’s something big brewing. And whoever’s behind it is smart enough to know that this is the right time, and that we might be defenseless.”

  “Paulina’s story,” I said, “all it’s going to do is create demand for the product.”

  “Without a doubt. Nothing gets people motivated like being told they shouldn’t do something. Word of mouth takes a match to ignite it. For all of Paulina’s moxie in getting this story, I worry that she’s going to inadvertently do the exact opposite of alarming the public-she’s going to make them want it even more.”

  I suddenly felt nauseous. When I’d met with Paulina, she told me there was a quid pro quo with the man who kidnapped her and threatened her daughter. She would have to do something for him in order to keep her daughter safe.

  Now I knew what that quid pro quo was. And why it was asked.

  The blond man, the same one who’d killed Brett

  Kaiser, had told her to write the article. He’d gotten her all the information she needed, perhaps even fabricated a few quotes, and those were her “unnamed sources.”

  I’d never seen Paulina scared, and I’d never seen her lie. In the last few days I’d seen both. And they scared the hell out of me.

  Whoever the man was that asked her to write the article knew that it would create an automatic demand for the product it featured. Paulina’s weapon was words, and he’d given her ammunition to forge something dangerous and potentially deadly.

  I had to tell Jack. This was getting too big. This man had scope and vision and knew exactly what getting to

  Paulina would do. Jack needed to know.

  And he was staring right at me. Knew full well I was thinking something.

  But to my surprise, the look on Jack’s face wasn’t full of wonder at what I was thinking…it was one of disappointment because he knew I was hiding something.

  “Time to spill it, Henry,” he said. Jack’s face turned to stone. This was a look I hadn’t seen before, and immediately I felt awful, lying to the man I’d idolized for so long. The man who’d been my partner on this story, who was motivated to come back to work because of what I’d uncovered.

  I left that man in the dust, but now he’d caught up to me.

  “After the explosion at Brett Kaiser’s apartment…” I said, trying to look at Jack but finding it hard. Finally I met his eyes. “I got a call.”

  “From who?” Jack said. He said it as much just to get me to admit it as he did to find out the answer.

  “Paulina Cole.”

  If Jack’s face had been stone, this caused it to crack a bit. His eyes opened wider, mouth opened just enough to show the surprise on his face.

  “Paulina,” he said. “Why in God’s name…”

  “She was kidnapped,” I said, the dam bursting. But truth be told, it felt good.

  “Kidnapped? By who? And why the hell would she call you?”

  I could see Jack’s eyes reddening, but his anger at learning the truth was now tempered by his desire to know the full story. And he’d get it.

  “She doesn’t know,” I said. “But the man who did it threatened to kill her daughter.”

  “You know I always kind of assumed Paulina was some sort of devil spawn. I’m moderately surprised to learn that she has a reproductive system.”

  “She thinks the guy who did it has connections in the

  NYPD. He said if she went to the cops he’d know.”

  “So she goes to you because you know cops you can trust.”

  “Partly, yeah.”

  “So what does she want from you?”

  “To help her find the man who did it.”

  “And in return, let me guess, you get the story.”

  I nodded. “That’s right.”

  “Jesus, Henry,” Jack said, tilting his head back, wiping his forehead with the tips of his fingers. “The story she wrote this morning, did you know it was going to run?”

  “No, I swear I didn’t.”

  “But?” Jack said.

  “But she told me she had to do something for him.

  That was the deal for him not to harm her daughter. My guess is the story this morning was what she promised, what he made her do.”

  “That would explain why the cops don’t know anything and why nobody would go on the record. Strange that for an article about a potential drug epidemic nobody from the narcotics division was quoted, or even knew about it.”

  “Or why the cops patrolling the streets haven’t heard about it.”

  “Today,” Jack said, taking a breath, “was the comingout party for this drug. Paulina’s story was the spark to get the Darkness into the mainstream. A cover story in a major New York newspaper will be read by over two million people, and another few million will see the headline and remember it.”

  “Word of mouth,” I said. “Best marketing in the world, and they got it for free.”

  Jack lowered his head. “They used us.”

  “There’s more,” I said. “I’m ninety-nine percent sure that the guy Chester who kidnapped Paulina is the same guy who killed Brett Kaiser. Physical descriptions matched.

  Curt Sheffield is helping me track him down, going off the physical info plus access to explosives and drugs.”

  “Do you think this guy,” Jack said, “could be the Fury?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “The descriptions from both

  Paulina and Kaiser’s doorman peg the suspect in his late thirties or early forties. It’s not impossible but I suspect twenty years ago he would have been a little too young to run a drug empire.”

  “So then he must be working for somebody,” Jack said. “Somebody smart enough to go after Paulina, and somebody powerful enough to have their fingers dug into the NYPD.”

  “So how the hell do we find out who this guy is?” I said. “Sheffield is looking into it, but if Paulina is right then most of my contacts in the department are useless.

  Paulina said this guy showed her a picture of her daughter that was part of an album posted on a social networking
site. The way these things work is that the only people who have access to the pictures you post are the people you accept as friends.”

  “You’re saying this guy would be stupid enough to be her friend online?”

  “No,” I said. “But I think he found someone who was because this particular photo was left off the site. Paulina gave me a list of everyone her daughter is friends with.

  Jack, I know you’re used to typewriters and ink quills, but this is going to take some electronic legwork.”

  “I can use the Google,” Jack said.

  “Yeah…I was afraid you’d say that. The list is upstairs.

  Forget about Victoria Kaiser for now. What we need to do is cross-check everyone on that list with Abigail Cole, if need be call everyone she’s friends with online.”

  “She’s in college, right? That could be hundreds of people.”

  “Good thing you don’t have any children, you won’t go into it knowing how damn difficult it is to talk to someone in their late teens or early twenties.”

  “You’re not that far from that age, Henry,” Jack said.

  “Yeah, I know. Why do you think I know they’re all nightmares?”

  Jack laughed. “Okay, sport, let’s go. Just one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I accidentally spilled coffee on my keyboard. Can you ask the help desk for a new one? This would be my fourth and I don’t think they’ll give me another one.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Come on, George Jetson, let’s go find

  Mr. Joshua.”

  30

  I forgot what it was like to be a college student.

  Abigail Cole had one hundred and ninety-seven friends on Facebook. Many of them had public profiles, and from that I was able to glean phone numbers and sometimes e-mail addresses. To those who had e-mail addresses, I sent notes asking to speak to them in a matter pertaining to an ongoing investigation. I clearly identified myself, hoping one would cop to giving Chester the photo.

  At least four of them picked up their cell phone during class. I could tell this because someone said quite audibly that if the phone wasn’t turned off posthaste, F would be merely the first of four letters on that student’s papers.

  When I was in college, one of my dreams was to have a beeper some day. As young as I was, sometimes I felt pretty old.

  Frustration began to seep in after I’d contacted nearly thirty of Abigail’s friends and made no headway. I wasn’t even sure how many of these people she was still close to, or whether or not they were real friends or just random friends-of-friends-of-friends.

  There had to be an easier way to do this. And just when I was about to brainstorm what that was, Jack came walking over.

  He had a big smile on his face, the kind of smile that you didn’t often see on a man approaching seventy. This was more along the lines of a young child who’d accidentally discovered a hidden Christmas present that they didn’t expect to be there. Jack almost looked embarrassed to be happy.

  “What’s got you so toothy?” I said.

  “I think I found it,” he said.

  “Found what?”

  Jack took a chair from an empty cubicle and pulled it over to my desk. He laid a series of printouts in front of me.

  They looked to be from some sort of Web sites. They were chock-full of random ruminations, thoughts and pictures.

  “What is this?” I said.

  “Well,” Jack continued, the pride in his voice unmistakable, “I took the list of all of Abigail Cole’s online friends. I did every kind of search imaginable-Google,

  Yahoo, LexisNexis, you name it-and cross-referenced her name along with Web sites that contained photos. I figured if somebody had access to personal photos, they might have had access even earlier than when Paulina was first taken.”

  “Why would you assume that?” I said.

  “Whoever took Paulina wanted her to write that article to help publicize the Darkness. Which means these plans have been in the works for a lot longer than the little time gone by since her abduction. This blond guy needed to know how to get to Paulina well before he actually did it, meaning he needed to be sure of who had access to her daughter’s photos ahead of time. So when I did all that…I found something.”

  “A Web site,” I said.

  “A blog,” Jack continued. “Not active anymore, but get this. It was deleted just three days after Paulina was abducted. Coincidence, right?”

  “Could be,” I said. “What makes you think it has anything to do with this story?”

  “The blog was deleted, but a few cached pages were still available to see. Other Web sites had links to it.

  That’s part of the reason I was able to find it.”

  “And?”

  “And the blog’s creator is a girl named Pamela

  Ruffalo,” Jack said. “I know you haven’t had time to read all of these pages I printed out yet, but I’ll save you the detective work. Pam Ruffalo either was, or, more likely, still is Abigail Cole’s girlfriend.”

  “You’re kidding me. Her girlfriend posted pictures of her on the blog?”

  “No sir, Henry. Take a look for yourself.”

  I picked the half a dozen pages up, began to shuffle through them.

  There were about fifteen blog entries on the pages.

  They were dated starting about three months ago, and continued up until the last few days when the account was deleted.

  The posts were fairly specific about their relationship.

  According to the second entry, Pamela had met Abigail in college during a job recruitment fair. They’d both been online to hear more about an environmental consulting firm, got to talking, and had dinner at a campus eatery that night.

  Their first official date was that weekend. Weekend at

  Bernie’s, which Pam had rented on Netflix. She marveled at how they both had an appreciation for bad movies. And since that first date had gone so well, Pam had ordered

  Showgirls, Battlefield Earth and Mother Dearest for her new romantic interest.

  As the relationship progressed, Pam began to post pictures of the couple on the page. Some of the pictures were innocuous. The couple out at a party. Watching a field hockey game together. Sitting under a tree reading.

  Some of the pictures, though, were far more intimate.

  The first one that caught my attention was the two girls lying in bed, sheets up to their chins, bare shoulders visible. The photo must have been a self-portrait taken by one of the two girls, as a finger smudge obscured part of the right side of the shot.

  In another photo, the girls were dressed up in bustiers and garter belts. It looked like they were about to go to some sort of party.

  And in another shot, the two girls were snapped kissing passionately. I’d say one thing, they were kind of cute together.

  “These all came off the blog?” I said.

  “Every one.”

  “Were there any photos of Abigail Cole in a bikini? Or on the beach at all?”

  Jack squirmed. “Listen, I know she’s a good-looking girl but I’m not about to…”

  “No, that’s not why I’m asking. Paulina said when the guy took her, he showed her a photo of her daughter wearing a bikini on the beach. Paulina told me the photo the guy used was private. She said Abigail never posted it online, and she was clear about that. So where did the photo come from?”

  “I think I know,” Jack said. “But I need two things to confirm it.”

  “What are they?”

  “First off, I need you to find out one thing for me online. I don’t have access to it, but either you do or know someone who does.”

  “What do I…”

  “And the second thing,” Jack said, looking me dead in the eyes, “is that I need to talk to Paulina Cole.”

  31

  I stood in the middle of Rockefeller Center with my hands in my pockets, watching people go about their day.

  The sun was bright and there was just a
wisp of breeze.

  A tour group passed us by, clinking and clanking as the binoculars and cameras jangled about their necks.

  There were lots of tour groups always walking about this area, and they would often look at me in my work clothes like I was some sort of alien species. These people didn’t seem to believe that anyone actually lived or worked in

  Manhattan, that we all just bused in day after day and wandered about starstruck, wondering when we might run into Derek Jeter or Sarah Jessica Parker on the street.

  I think they believed only celebrities and homeless people lived in the city.

  I watched the corner of Fifty-first Street, knowing that’s the direction she’d be coming from. Paulina wasn’t too keen on meeting me up by the Gazette, partly because she didn’t like to move for anybody and partly because when she left the paper she was thought of just about as fondly as Mussolini.

  “Parker?” Paulina Cole said. She had just rounded the corner and was staring at me like I’d just thrown a pie at her from across a crowded room. She was wearing black leather boots and a knee-length skirt. Her hair was recently done, and I hated to admit it but she looked pretty good. “You’d better have a damn good reason for calling me up to the Hard Rock Cafe.”

  I’d heard Paulina refer to Rockefeller Center by that moniker before. And she didn’t mean it as a compliment.

  To her, this neighborhood was a tourist mecca, drastically overpriced, and as close to real New York as the Hard

  Rock was to being the real Arnold Schwarzenegger. “I expense my cell phone bill and cab rides, and if you keep calling me I’ll have some explaining to do when the finance department reviews it.”

  “Nice to talk to you, too, Paulina,” I said. “Thanks for coming.”

  “Don’t thank me. I came because you said you had more information about my daughter.”

  “Yeah…you might want to sit down.”

  “What, you think whatever you have to tell me is going to make me suddenly pass out in your arms or something?

  Get over yourself, Henry. Nothing surprises me anymore.”