with rehab facilities or resorts. What if Stephen and
Helen were trying to get away from something?”
“Like what?” my father asked.
“I don’t know, but that kind of money seems kind of
high for a rehab joint, especially when he could
probably just check himself into detox. It would,
though, be just enough money if you wanted to disap
pear.”
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“Fifty grand might get you somewhere,” I said, “but
is it enough to start a new life?”
“Maybe not,” she said. “But it might be enough to
survive.”
20
We arrived back home feeling like we’d taken a few
too many punches to the head. So many thoughts and
ideas were swimming around in there—mixed in with
the fear and apprehension of what my father was going
through—that I wished we could just curl up in bed, fall
asleep for a month or two and wake up with everything
back to normal.
Even if we did manage to prove that my father didn’t
kill Stephen, James Parker would go right back to Bend
where he would reenter that joke of a life. My mother
hadn’t even come because he refused to let her. He
wouldn’t be seen like this. Chained. Weak. And
knowing my mother, she wouldn’t question it.
I wondered if it was worth it. Saving him. Maybe the
universe was a little more right with James Parker in jail.
Maybe I was saving a man who didn’t deserve to be
saved.
Yet here I was, doing what needed to be done. Trying
to find the proof that would free him. I wondered if he
would do the same for me. The answer was fairly
obvious.
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I thought about the money Helen Gaines had asked
for. Amanda was right. If Stephen’s aim was to check
into rehab, fifty grand was overkill. It could have been
for more drugs, I supposed, but if the two of them had
subsisted for nearly thirty years to this point, it didn’t
make sense that they suddenly needed a lump sum to
sate their cravings.
From what it seemed like, the dealers I’d seen the
other day had more than enough business to keep them
going. True, on the surface the ones I saw looked far
more put together than my brother. Scott Callahan and
Kyle Evans barely looked like they touched the stuff.
What was the old drug dealer’s maxim—never get high
on your own supply?
These two, as well as their well-heeled cohorts,
looked as if they were in this game to make as much
money as possible. With the exception of the kid whose
briefcase now sat in my living room, they all looked like
red-meat alpha males, the kind of guys who would
normally be braying on the floor of the stock exchange
rather than riding the subway to dole out dime bags.
Thing is, the cocaine in the briefcase made it clear
that not all of their scores were small-time. Any
company built its business on a combination of small
revenue streams mixed with larger ones. The larger
ones took more effort and paid higher dividends, but the
smaller ones tended to be the most dependable, the ones
that would always be there.
With the economy tanking the way it was, with
people watching their wallets to a degree I’d never ex
perienced in my lifetime, it wouldn’t surprise me if dis
posable income for recreational drugs—like it was for
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all other consumer products—was being severely
limited. Especially since coke was a favorite amongst
bankers, financiers (i.e., high-salaried types). The kind
of people whose livelihoods were being dashed against
the rocks as the economy tumbled.
Maybe Stephen and Helen really were trying to start
a new life. After all, Helen had desired nothing more
than to raise her son with James Parker (why on God’s
green earth she would want to do this is an entirely dif
ferent matter. One I’m not sure had a satisfactory
answer).
Leaving the country would enable them to start
their lives anew, to begin fresh somewhere they
weren’t known. Where demons and drugs wouldn’t
follow them.
But that last word…Fury. I still didn’t know what it
meant, if anything. It might have been a spasm, some
thing Helen Gaines wrote while her mental faculties
bounced around like Ping-Pong balls.
I put it on the back burner. If it was relevant, it would
come up again.
The apartment felt warm and inviting, though
compared to the visitation room in a correctional facility
an icebox would have felt warm and inviting. We both
stripped off our clothes, Amanda jumping into the
shower while I pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt.
Before long, steam was pouring through the slat in
between the door and the tiling.
I approached the door silently, then knocked gently.
There was no answer. I knocked again, and when there
was still no reply I knocked again, louder.
One more knock and I heard the water turn off.
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“What is it, Henry?” She sounded annoyed.
“Just wanted to say hi,” I said. “Go back to your
shower.”
“Gee, thanks.”
The water came back on. Good thing there was no
lock on the bathroom door.
I gently turned the knob, the cool air flowing into my
face. I could see Amanda’s body hazy behind the
shower glass. She hadn’t seen me yet.
I stripped off my shorts, flung the T-shirt onto a chair.
Then I pulled open the shower door.
Amanda spun around, shampoo in her hair. The look
on her face quickly went from annoyance to surprise to
pleasure. She pushed the door open and I joined her,
wrapping my body around her, feeling her warmth
surround me.
We kissed, and then our bodies were clinging to each
other, skin on skin. Pain and hurt and everything else
melted away as we touched. My body was on fire as I
kissed her neck, Amanda throwing her head back as she
sighed. I kissed her up and down her body, feeling her
skin tingle below my fingertips. Then I pressed myself
against her, hard, and she moved in perfect rhythm with
my body.
We touched and held and moved against each other
under that beating stream for a long time, until the heat
became so unbearable that we ended up in bed, naked,
clinging to each other like we always did when we
wanted the world to melt away for a little while.
I left Amanda sleeping in bed and crept into the living
room. Booting the computer up, I poured myself a cup
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177
of ice coffee from the jug we kept in the fridge. I took a
sip. Stale. It’d probably been sitting in there close to a
week. I checked the freeze
r, but we were fresh out of
grounds. Instead, I poured a healthy dollop of milk,
added enough sweetener to make my teeth chatter and
sat down.
Our Internet connection was spotty at best, so it was
a sigh of relief when my home page came up. I’d
changed my preferences so that the Gazette’s page
would load whenever I opened my browser. I took a
moment to read the latest stories, then went to Google
and began my search.
I typed in the name “Scott Callahan.” To no great
surprise, over four thousand entries came up. To refine
the search, I added “New York.”
That narrowed it down to under a thousand. There
were a few wedding notices and Web sites for law
offices, but unfortunately none of them had any
pictures. I scrolled through a few dozen pages hoping
for something that would perhaps be linked to the Scott
Callahan I followed the other day, but nothing came up.
I went back to the Google home page and typed in
“Kyle Evans” and “New York.” Two thousand entries
came up. I sighed, having no choice but to slog through.
Nothing seemed to be terribly interesting until the
fourth page. The page title was “Dozens laid off in
wake of financial collapse.” I clicked the link.
The article was from a financial magazine, dated
about six months ago. It was a feature on the recent
meltdowns of several financial institutions and the
decision to lay off massive numbers of workers, some
of whom had just graduated from business school. The
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author had interviewed several recently fired employ
ees, including one man named Kyle Evans.
The section read:
Kyle Evans expected to pay off his student loans
in a matter of months, having taken a six-figure
job right after receiving his MBA. Yet within
weeks of his first day, Evans, a twenty-seven
year-old Wharton graduate, was unemployed and
unable to find a job.
“Between undergrad and Penn I owe about a
hundred thousand dollars,” Evans said. “I was
going to have a bitch of a time paying it back
anyway, but now what do I do?”
Though the article was posted on the Web, there were
several photos taken of its subjects. They were small
thumbnails, and according to the site these were exclu
sive and had not been printed in the physical magazine.
And there, in a group of three other men and woman
his age, was the very Kyle Evans I’d seen on the street
the other day. His hair was shorter and he was about ten
pounds heavier, but there was no doubt it was him.
Suddenly Kyle’s career choice made more sense.
With no income, and training for jobs that didn’t exist
anymore, Kyle had decided to take another route to
paying off his loans, joining an industry that didn’t have
as many down cycles. One that could afford him the
same lifestyle. The same money.
It was a fair assumption that Scott Callahan—and
maybe some, if not all, the other briefcase men—were
victims of the same circumstances as Kyle. If you
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179
thought about it, who would make better drug couriers?
These people were young, energetic, highly motivated,
perhaps by money above all else. And, most of all, they
owed. And if they owed enough, they’d be willing to
take a few risks, break the law for a while before they
found their footing. But who was employing them?
What was 718 Enterprises?
I pulled “718 Enterprises” into Google, Yahoo! and
half a dozen other search engines. Less than a dozen hits
came up, none of them looking as if they had anything
to do with a company of that name or with any relation
to New York. I twiddled my thumbs. I’d never been a
thumb twiddler, but at this point I wasn’t quite sure
where to go or who to talk to. And we still had no idea
where Helen Gaines was.
I opened up the music player on my computer, took
a pair of headphones out and put on some Springsteen.
Something about the Boss always made me think a little
more clearly. There was honesty in his voice that was
often missing from popular music, and his earlier works
were like pure blasts of adrenaline. That’s what I needed
right now. An energy boost to carry me along. There
were half a dozen threads in this story, and I had no
doubt that when unravelled they would all lead to
Stephen’s killer. I just needed that one connecting
thread that told me how the story would all play out.
I sat there for half an hour, shuffling between songs.
“Dead Man Walking” came on. It was a haunting tune,
composed for the movie of the same name where Sean
Penn played a character named Matthew Poncelet, on
death row for the murder of two teenagers. The film was
based on a book by Sister Helen Prejean, and Poncelet
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was actually a composite of two men Prejean had coun
seled. Prejean grows closer to this man many viewed
as a monster, trying to understand the humanity beneath
the inhumane crime. The music was simple, tragic, and
the lyrics filled my head as my eyes closed, the sounds
enveloping me.
All I could feel was the drugs and the shotgun
And the fear up inside of me
Suddenly my eyes opened. I stood up, the head
phones flying off my head and clattering on the floor.
Drugs.
The Fury. I knew that word had sounded familiar, in
a context that, if I was right, made terrifying sense.
We kept a bookshelf in the living room, spines three
deep and nearly pouring out onto the floor. I’d bought it
used for seventy-five bucks from a thrift shop. It was
maple, still in good shape, with one large crack running
lengthwise down the side. I figured a good book was one
read so often the spine was cracked, a good bookshelf was
one that was cracked as well. That might have been jus
tification for the piece’s condition, but it made sense to
me.
Sometimes when I’d finish a book I’d bring it to the
office, drop it in the Inbox of a reporter who I thought
might enjoy it. Sports books went to Frank Rourke,
trashy celebrity tell-alls went to Evelyn Waterstone. I
knew the gal had her soft spot.
There were some books, though, that would never
leave this shelf. And no matter where I moved, or what
life planned for me, they would never be far away.
Without a second thought I pulled a pile of books
from the middle shelf and sent them toppling to the
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181
ground. The noise was loud, and soon Amanda entered,
bleary eyed, clearly wondering what was making such
a racket. I must have looked half-crazed, throwing books
on the floor, looking for that one book I knew was there.
But I couldn’t find it.
I threw more books on the floor, the shelves
emptying, my frustration growing. Where the hell was
it? I knew it was here, somewhere.
“Henry,” Amanda said, the patience in her voice sur
prising me. “I’m not going to ask. I assume there’s a
good reason for this. What are you looking for?”
“A book,” I said stupidly, still rifling through the few
books left. I told her the title and author. She looked at
me, then walked back into our bedroom. I figured she’d
had enough, would try to go back to sleep. But a minute
later she came back holding something in her hands.
And when my tired eyes focused, I saw what it was.
Through the Darkness, by Jack O’Donnell.
“I was reading it, remember?”
“You are so freaking beautiful,” I gushed, standing
up and taking the book from her.
I opened the cover, thumbed to the table of contents.
There it was, chapter eight. “The Unknown Devil.”
I began to skim, looking for that one word, that one
phrase I knew existed. It was the link, what Helen
Gaines was talking about. What she and Stephen were
running from.
Then I found it. Midway down one page. I read the
paragraph, feeling a chill run down my spine.
As the ’80s came to a close, police were baffled
by a string of homicides occurring at seemingly
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random locations at random intervals. Between
August 1987 and October 1988, two dozen men
were found murdered execution-style, often with
one or two bullets emptied into their heads. These
men were notable because they had previously
been either arrested or identified as drug dealers,
peddling primarily crack cocaine (among other
narcotics).
It was felt, both by the law enforcement com
munity as well as within the criminal element it
self, that these murders were part of a larger
consolidation of Manhattan’s drug trade. Whis
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 Fury (2009) Page 17
