in the morning. The deli I got this from had no logo, no
branding, and the bag they gave it to me in had one of
those cheerful I♥NY slogans on the side. Those were
the bags you gave out when you didn’t have a Web site,
and didn’t have spontaneous MP3 downloading capa
bility.
There was no definitive time when he’d be home. I’d
arrived at 7:00 p.m. on the chance it was an early day.
So far it had not been. Around eight-thirty I went for a
quick walk up and down the block to keep my blood
flowing, and to make sure people in the neighborhood
didn’t get suspicious.
The Fury
215
Finally at eight-thirty, just as I was beginning to feel
the need to pee, I saw him walking down the street.
He carried the briefcase lightly. It was clearly empty.
As he got closer I could see that his suit was
wrinkled, stained through with the sweat from a day
spent going house to house, subway to subway.
When he got close enough to the point where he
could see me, I stepped out onto the sidewalk. Right in
front of him. He was bigger than I remembered, and the
ill-fitting suit didn’t fully stretch enough to hide the
muscles in his arms. The shock of black hair that had
surely been neatly combed that morning now sat askew
on his head, beads of sweat traveling down his forehead
and nestling in the collar of his formerly white oxford
shirt. The man stopped for a moment, eyed me curi
ously, defensive, as though he half-expected me to take
a random swing at him.
“Scott Callahan?” I said.
“The hell are you?” Scotty replied, taking a step
back.
“My name is Henry Parker,” I said. “And you’re
going to want to talk to me.”
Scotty walked in front of me the whole way, like a
prisoner heading toward the electric chair, knowing
there was no chance of reprieve. On the street, Scotty
had told me to go to hell. I responded by telling him ev
erything I knew, how I’d followed him the other day.
How I’d observed him going into each of those houses,
how I knew he was selling drugs.
I had to leave out my stealing Hector Guardado’s
briefcase. He didn’t need to know I was so close. I
216
Jason Pinter
wanted to have leverage on Scotty, but put too much
weight on a person and rather than talk they’ll simply
buckle. If Scotty thought I knew so much to the point
where I could incriminate both him and 718 Enter
prises, he’d feel no reason to talk to me. He needed to
feel there was a way out. If there was a chance at
survival, there was a chance to talk his way out of it.
I told him my name, my job. That he could end up
on the front page of the Gazette tomorrow. Naturally I
didn’t tell him this was a personal investigation, but
chances were Scotty Callahan would not be the kind of
guy who’d consider filing a suit for libel.
We went into a 24-hour coffee shop, somewhere
quiet where we wouldn’t be disturbed and didn’t have
to worry about being kicked out. Scotty walked with his
head down, and for a moment I felt sorry for the guy.
He was still in his rumpled suit, still carrying the same
briefcase. As he walked, the case flopped against his
side like a fish running out of air.
I led him to the back of the restaurant, where we took
a booth. A waitress came by and dropped two menus
on the table with a thunk. One good thing about New
York coffee shops, they took the food from every menu
in the city and crammed it under one roof. You could
order anything from a BLT to baby back ribs to sushi.
Though I wouldn’t recommend coffee-shop sushi.
Scotty slid into the far end of the booth. He looked
tired, and I could imagine that this was literally the
very last place on earth he wanted to be. After a long
day delivering house to house, I was sure a cold beer
and a warm bed were the next two items on his agenda.
They’d have to wait a little while.
The Fury
217
“You’re making a big mistake,” Scotty said. “I don’t
know anything.”
“See right there,” I said, pointing at him. “That’s
how I know you’re lying. Anyone who says ‘you’re
making a big mistake’ knows a whole hell of a lot.”
“Great, so you’re a mind reader. Read my palm and
let me the hell out of here.”
“You stand up before I say you can, and you know
what the front page of the paper says tomorrow?” I
held up my hands as though spelling out a movie
matinee for him. “It says, ‘Scott Callahan, drug
dealer.’ Now, I don’t know what your dreams and am
bitions are, Scotty, but I’m going to guess you’ll have
a tough time finding gainful employment after that
happens. So we’re going to sit here, I’m going to have
a big-ass chocolate milk shake, and we’re going to
talk. Then, maybe, if I feel like you’ve been honest,
you can go.”
“And if not?”
I held up my hands again, framing the marquee.
“Then consider yourself Spitzered.”
“You’re a classy guy.”
“Yeah, and how’s the drug-dealing business going?”
“I’m not a drug dealer,” Scotty said. The anger in his
voice told me he actually believe what he said.
“Now, I’m not sure what the actual term ‘drug
dealer’ is in Webster’s, but I’m pretty sure that if you
go door to door selling drugs, you’d find a picture of
yourself next to that definition.”
The thing was, I had no proof of Scotty being a
dealer. I could link him to 718 Enterprises, and Hector
Guardado, and possibly even my brother, but I hadn’t
218
Jason Pinter
actually witnessed him doing it. Thankfully by denying
it with such vehemence he proved it for me.
“I’m not a dealer,” he said. His voice was quieter this
time. I wondered if Scotty had ever sat alone in the dark
thinking about what he was doing, what he’d become.
The softness in his tone told me he had. “That’s not what
I do.”
“Then, please,” I said. “Enlighten me.”
He looked at me suspiciously, his eyes traveling over
my shirt, my chest. Then he leaned over and peered
under the table.
“Can I help you?” I said.
“Are you wired?”
I shook my head. “I’m not. This is between you and
me, for now. I’m not looking to bust you. That’s the
truth. I just want some answers and I know you have
them. You help me, I help you.”
“How do you help me?” he said.
“By keeping my mouth shut.”
“And how can I know I can trust you?” he asked. “I
have a family, man. I have friends. They all think I’m
living on a sweet severance package.”
I sat for a moment. “You know what guys usually say
in the movies when someone asks how they know they
can trust them?”
“No.”
“They say, ‘because you have no choice.’ So right
now, you have no choice but to trust me. I’d be happy
to strip down to my George Foreman underwear, but I
don’t think that’s a scene either of us needs.”
Just to show him I was on the up-and-up, I stood up,
flattened out my jeans and did a quick flip-up of my top.
The Fury
219
Sitting back down, I could tell Scotty was far from sat
isfied, but he also knew if motivated, I could cause him
a world of trouble.
“They’re not my drugs,” he said. “I never wanted to
do it. I mean, you’re a reporter, right?”
“That’s what my business card says.”
“So you’ve got a job. And even though everyone’s
saying newspapers are going in the tank, you’re still
getting paid, right?”
I wondered where this was going, but nodded.
“I had my life planned out. I was gonna have my
MBA by twenty-six,” Scotty said. “So much for that.
Three-point-nines all the way through college. Paid my
own way through school because my parents could
barely afford to buy the clothes I took with me. And
right before I graduated, I got a six-figure job with
Deutsche Bank structuring CDOs. That’s the American
dream, right”
“CDOs?” I said.
“Collateralized debt obligations. Basically you have
a lot of banks giving out hundreds of thousands of loans.
These loans are packaged into what’s called a security.
Then a bunch of securities are piled into what’s called
a CDO. Then when the crisis hit, we all got screwed.”
“Still not quite sure I follow.”
“Think about it like you were selling eggs,” Scotty
said. “There are dozens of chickens laying hundreds of
eggs. Those eggs are taken from all different chickens
and put into one carton, which is then sold. But what
happens if the whole coop was diseased? Every egg in
the carton is basically worthless. That’s pretty much
what happened. We ended up with a bunch of packaged
220
Jason Pinter
loans that were in essence worthless. And once the
economy got turned upside down, everyone who
worked in that branch got the ticket out of there. I was
at Deutsche Bank less than a year when I got canned.”
“I’m guessing you didn’t live with your parents
while you were working.”
“No way. Bought me a sweet two-bedroom for threequarters of a mil. Between salary and bonus, I could
afford the payments while paying off my student loans.
But then I lost my job, couldn’t make the payments, and
took a hundred-thousand-dollar loss selling the apart
ment.”
“Wow,” I said. “I think you lost more on that pad than
my apartment is worth.”
“Don’t be too sure. There’s always someone willing
to overpay for Manhattan real estate. If I could have
waited six months I would have found a good buyer, but
I couldn’t afford my mortgage anymore and it was
either that or live on the street for a while.”
“And now?”
“And now what? I live with my parents. They still
think I’m gonna be some financial genius. Warren
Buffett or something. That’s why you gotta keep this
quiet, man. They can’t know. It’d kill them.” Scotty was
starting to breathe harder, red flaring up under his collar.
He was getting angry just talking about this. “You know
what that feels like? You work your ass off for ten years,
you pour every penny you have into your future. And
then just when things seem like they’re going your way,
the rug is pulled out from under you and you’re left with
nothing but debt, bad credit and a crappy old bedroom
that wasn’t big enough when you were in high school.”
The Fury
221
“So you start dealing. To make ends meet.”
“It’s not permanent,” Scotty said. “Things will turn
around. There are peaks and valleys in every time cycle.
In a year or so I’ll have the job of my choice, back in a
sweet-ass apartment. Living the dream.”
“You tell that to all the people you’re poisoning?”
“Screw yourself, Mr. High-and-Mighty. I’m doing
what I need to do to survive. I owe fifty grand on my
tuition, and even if I do get another job, who knows how
long that’ll last. You’re a reporter, right? You ever think
about all those people you feed bull to day in and day out?
All those magazines telling women how they can doll
themselves up, get sliced open just to be prettier? So
maybe they can look like whatever anorexic slut you
shove on your cover? Don’t tell me about poison, man.
You think I’m any worse than you are, you’re deluding
yourself.”
“I don’t need to defend myself. I know what I do, and
I know what you do. If you can even compare the two,
you’re the delusional one, Scotty.”
A waiter came over. He took a notepad from his
pocket, licked his thumb and turned to a fresh page.
“Can I get ya?”
“Pastrami and rye,” Scotty said. “With Swiss and
mustard. And a cream soda.”
“Chocolate milk shake,” I said. “And a side of fries.”
The waiter nodded, walked off. I turned back to
Scotty.
“When did you start?” I asked.
He sighed, for a moment saying nothing. He was
steeling himself up to talk. “’Bout a year ago,” he said.
“How? Who introduced you?”
222
Jason Pinter
“I went to my buddy Kyle’s house one night a week
after I got laid off. It was a few of us. Kyle’s girlfriend,
some chick I’d been seeing for a month who dumped
me a few days later when she realized I couldn’t afford
tables at the China Club anymore.”
“Wow, that’s a sob story if I ever heard one. Let me
call up Larry King for you.”
“Dude, you’re missing the point. Do you have any
idea what it’s like, how utterly fucking hopeless you
feel, to live your whole life working for something only
to know it can end—” he snapped his fingers “—just
like that?”
Scotty sat there, leaning across the table like a life
coach trying to convince me of the path to righteous
ness. Though Scotty and I had almost nothing in
common—not our clothes, not our upbringing, not our
vocation—something about what he said hit home for
me. With my industry seemingly scaling back by the
day, not to mention the far too often times my life was
endangered by that chosen vocation, I knew how
tenuous things could be.
“Your friend Kyle,” I said. “Go on.”
“We stayed up late, drank a lot. I think our girls were
s
tarting to get pissed off, feeling like we were paying
each other more attention than we were them. And they
were probably right. At some point I start jonesing for
a toke. I used in college a bit. I asked Kyle if he knew
where we could get some good stuff, and he kind of
looked at me and laughed.”
Our food came, and Scotty tore into it before mine
had even been set down. The pastrami and rye disap
peared in several ravenous bites, washed down with a
The Fury
223
chug of cream soda. When he finished, Scotty smiled
and said, “Best sandwich in the world.”
My chocolate milk shake looked a little silly in com
parison, but I took a long sip and felt like a kid again.
He wiped his mouth, placed the napkin gently on the
table and continued. “Kyle just got up, went into his
bedroom and came back with what looked like an eighth
of great bud. At first I didn’t ask questions, I was just
looking forward to the feeling. When we were good and
baked—and man, that stuff baked us quick—I asked
him where he’d got it. Know what he told me?”
“What?”
“He said, ‘leftovers.’ I didn’t know what the hell that
meant, so I asked him. He said times were tough, and
he’d been dealing a bit on the side. His mom just got
diagnosed with cervical cancer and she didn’t have
health insurance. So he was dealing to help her out with
the bills. Kyle’s dad died about ten years ago, drank
away every penny they had, even gambled some that
they didn’t. So I asked him who set him up with that,
and he said he’d met a guy who was kind of like the
head recruiter. Kind of like Ben Affleck in Boiler Room,
the grand pooh-bah of the game. The guy you want to
talk to if you want in.”
“So Kyle set you up with this guy.”
“Yeah. Kyle said he was at some party where a guy
named Vinnie came and sold the host some coke. Kyle
was curious about making some extra coin, so he pulled
Vinnie aside. Vinnie gave him a phone number, and
that’s all she wrote.”
“And how did you get involved?” I asked.
Scotty chugged more of his cream soda, a frothy
224
Jason Pinter
mustache trail on his upper lip. He saw me staring, and
wiped it away. “After a few weeks, I noticed Kyle was
coming home later and later, and then I saw him with
this sweet watch, a Movado. Brand-new, bought from
the store. He said he was pulling down two, three grand
The Fury (2009) Page 21
