though she’d just withdrawn. To her, he was more like
a piece of furniture than a husband. He was there
whether you liked it or not. It was your choice to put
him there. But like a table or desk, you could ignore it.”
“Why didn’t she leave him?”
“I don’t know. I wish she had. She turned inward.
You saw those knitting needles at the police station—
they became kind of her solace. She was a kind woman,
never hurt anybody. So whenever he went on one of his
rampages, she would take it like more of a man than he
ever was, then go back to her needles.”
“That’s awful.”
“She deserved another chance at love, at life. It was
almost like at some point she became shell-shocked,
just her nerves and her wits fried by everything he’d
done. I remember one night when I was about eight. I
spent that summer working at a corner deli, restocking
shelves a few hours a day for a dollar an hour.”
Amanda laughed. “Even for an eight-year-old that’s
pretty far below minimum wage.”
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255
“It wasn’t the money. They couldn’t afford to send me
to camp, and I didn’t want to be around the house any
more than I absolutely had to. One night I came home
around seven, usually when we had dinner. It was one of
the few times he was getting a regular paycheck. He got
home from work around seven-thirty most days, and he
would walk in and head right for the dinner table, sit
down and start eating. It didn’t matter if we were there to
join him. To him, that’s what he worked the day for. To
be alone. This day, though, he came home early. We both
arrived home about seven, and the meat loaf was still in
the oven. One thing about her, my mom made the best
meat loaf in the world. Onions, red peppers, just deli
cious.”
I continued. “He went to the table, sat down and
noticed there was no food out. No drinks set. He yelled
her name—Marilyn—and waited. She came out, stared
at him, simply said, ‘It’ll be about twenty minutes.’ It
turned out he found out that day they were cutting back
his shifts, and he’d lose about twenty percent of his
salary. I didn’t know this. Neither did she.
“He took a glass, threw it at the wall. It shattered into
a thousand pieces. My mother just stood there, her
mouth open, more confused than scared. Then he took
a plate, did the same thing. It exploded. Then he took
another plate, then another, then every piece on the table
and threw it at the wall. I remember screaming, telling
him to stop, worried he would hit her or me. Instead, he
kept throwing until piles of broken glass were laid over
our floor like a carpet. He was breathing heavy. My
mother just stood in the doorway, mouth open. Then she
turned around, went back to the stove and checked the
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temperature on the food. I called 911, but the cop they
sent over ten minutes later was in a bowling league with
my dad. Since nobody was hurt and my mother wouldn’t
press charges, it all went away. After that my father
went upstairs, and twenty minutes later the food was on
the table and he was eating. Nobody picked the glass up
for a week. That’s when I knew there was something
wrong, that she wasn’t like most of my friends’ mothers.
And it was eighteen years of my life before I could
leave. I actually tried to take her with me, to convince
her she could start a new life somewhere. You know
what she said to me?”
Amanda shook her head.
“She said, ‘Why would I leave everything I have
here?’ I had to leave before living there sucked the life
out of me like it did her.”
“Mya,” Amanda said. “Me. That’s why you always
come back.”
“I don’t know,” I said. My eyes felt heavy, my body
too tired for the morning. “I just never imagined at any
point in my life that I would lift a finger to help that
man. And now here we are.”
“Doing what you’re doing, helping him,” she said,
“is why you’re not him.”
We sat there, the bright day outside hiding something
dark that was waiting for me. I stood up. Went to the
now-infamous suitcase and found a clean shirt. My cell
phone was on the floor. I picked it up, noticed I had a
message. It was from Wallace Langston. My heart sped
up as I listened, a surge within me as a ray of hope
appeared.
“Henry, it’s Wallace. I have those files you wanted.
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257
Let me know how you want to get them. Call me. Hope
you’re okay.”
I immediately called him back, Wallace’s office
picking up on the first ring. His secretary connected me.
It was great to hear the editor in chief’s voice.
“Henry, how are you?” he said. “I was beginning to
worry.”
“About me? Why?”
“If you’ve given me one reason not to worry about
your safety in the time we’ve known each other, I’m not
aware of it.”
“I’ll try harder.”
“So I have Jack’s files,” he said. “Of course, there could
be more at his home, but this is everything he kept at the
office pertaining to Through the Darkness. They’ll be here
waiting for you. They’re in my office for the time being.”
“Wallace, you’re a lifesaver. With any luck this will
shed some light on this Fury thing and help get my dad
out. And when it’s all over, I think there might be a hell
of a story.”
“I was hoping you might say that,” Wallace said,
“And frankly, if there wasn’t, we’d need to have a
serious chat about all this ‘personal time’ you’ve been
taking. So in case I’m not here, I’ll make sure you have
access to my office.”
“You know,” I said, “is there any chance you could
have them messengered over?”
“Why?” Wallace asked.
“Something happened last night, let’s just say I need
to stay out of sight for a little while.”
“What the hell did you do, Henry?” I could sense the
frustration in his voice.
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“Nothing. Really. It should all blow over soon.”
“Spoken like someone who has no idea what he’s in
for.”
“Please, Wallace,” I said.
“Fine,” he sighed. “I think I have your address some
where in my Rolodex here…”
“Actually, I need them sent to a different address.”
“Okay, where to?”
“It’s on the notepad here, one sec.”
“On the notepad?” Wallace asked. “Where the hell
are you, a bar?”
“Not exactly. But on that note, there’s one more
thing…if this does lead to a story, I might need to talk
to you about extending my expense acco
unt for a few
days. Oh, and I’m staying under the name Leonard
Denton.”
“Henry,” Wallace said, “what the hell have you
gotten yourself into?”
I had an hour before the files were to arrive, so I went
downstairs and found a deli where I bought a bagel
with cream cheese and a bran muffin with two large
coffees for breakfast. I could almost feel Wallace’s hair
turn a deeper shade of gray when I told him where we
were staying, but there was a chance if a story came out
of all of this that the Gazette would pick up the tab.
Since I might have to resort to selling locks of my hair
if the charges remained on my credit card, I hoped for
my sake and theirs that one would emerge.
When I got back to the room, Amanda had showered
and was wearing a pair of jeans and a tank top. She was
sitting out on the balcony, the breeze whipping through
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259
her hair, a glass of water on the edge of the lounge
chair.
She turned her head to look at me, smiled.
“This is kind of nice,” she said. “Maybe we should
move in here.”
“I’ll go buy some lottery tickets.”
“Sit down,” she said. “Stay a while.”
We ate on the balcony, the skyscrapers of Times
Square surrounding us. When the coffee was done, I
went inside and brewed another pot from the instant
machine and we had seconds. It might have been the
greatest breakfast I ever had.
When we finished, the phone rang from inside. I
picked it up. It was the front desk. A package had arrived
for me.
I went downstairs and signed for the package, a large,
bulky padded folder with Wallace’s messy handwriting.
A minor miracle it didn’t end up somewhere in Antigua.
I brought the package upstairs, cleaned off the bed
spread and laid out all the papers in front of me. There
were reams of pages, half a dozen thick notebooks filled
to the brim. This is what Jack had worked with while
writing one of the seminal books of his generation on
crime. Just looking at these old pages brought a smile
to my face and courage to my heart.
And with those in mind, I began to read.
Amanda stayed in the living room, watching something
on television at a low volume. I was perched on the bed
amidst a mess of files, trying my best to keep them in order.
From the smell of the pages I could sense that nobody had
gone through them in some time. No need to, until now.
I knew that wherever he was, Jack would approve.
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The amount of research and notes Jack took was
staggering. Through the Darkness was forty-two
chapters long, and these pages only touched on twelve
of them. Jack had transcriptions of interviews with
dozens of people, from street dealers to middlemen, to
cops and politicians, to local residents who’d witnessed
their streets regress from thriving neighborhoods into
third world countries.
He’d looked at this story from every angle. And I
would have killed to be able to discuss it with him.
Some of the statistics Jack had uncovered were stag
gering, and in the years since the book was published
they could have only grown more bleak.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, over
four million people in the United States had used crack
cocaine at some point in their life, including nearly five
percent of all high-school students. The drug was used
primarily by men over the age of twenty-five. The
typical user was African-American, aged twenty-eight,
with an income at or below the poverty line.
The main reason, Jack had written, that crack cocaine
had become so prevalent was due to its relative cheap
ness to manufacture, as well as the immediate high it
produced. An eight ball, or an eighth of an ounce of rock,
cost about thirty dollars depending on where it was pur
chased.
According to Jack’s interviews, a surprising number
of people would actually cook the mixture themselves
rather than buy it ready-made, simply due to monetary
concerns. It was cheaper to be your own chemist than
go to the store. It was carried and sold in everything
from glass vials to cellophane to tinfoil, even the rolls
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261
people generally used for coins. It was most predomi
nant in larger cities with more densely populated urban
areas, such as Los Angeles, New York, Baltimore and
Chicago.
It was also surprising to note that in interviews with
nearly twenty dealers, Jack was unable to find one
person who actually used the drug.
Flipping through the pages, I came upon an interview
with Butch Willingham that Jack had apparently con
ducted just weeks before Willingham was killed. Wil
lingham denied ever using the drug, and in fact said that
anyone who did was frowned upon. Jack had pressed
in the interview:
BW: People who smoke don’t do their jobs. They
sit around all day acting stupid. They ain’t out
there making money. They ain’t out there selling
product. This a business, man. Isn’t one of the first
rules of business to always get rid of the bottom
ten percent?
JO: I’ve heard that before:
BW: See, in our line of work, that’s more like
twenty-five percent. Figure ten percent get stoned,
take themselves out of the game. Another ten per
cent get busted.
JO: And the other five percent?
BW: They gots ta be made gone. I been around
the country, man. Lived in L.A. and Baltimore be
fore coming to NYC. Got family and friends
everywhere. Cities change but things ain’t that
different. Don’t matter where you are or where
you work. If you sell, you gotta sell right.
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JO: Butch, you said if someone doesn’t sell
right, they have to be “made gone.” What do
you mean by that?
BW: I mean, if you run a business, and some
one’s screwing up the bottom line, what do you
do with them?
JO: Somehow I don’t think you’re talking about
early retirement, a pension plan.
BW: You might call it an early retirement.
JO: So if someone needs to be “taken out,” where
does that come from?
BW: Come again?
JO: Who decides that bottom five percent? Who
makes the final call which people, pardon the ex
pression, live or die?
BW: Don’t know, man. Ain’t up to me, that’s for
sure.
JO: But surely you don’t work for yourself. There
are other people higher than you, I guess you
might call them the board or something along
those lines.
BW: Always report to the crew leader (Note: Wil
lingham refu
sed to identify his crew leader’s
name, but it was confirmed by several subjects to
be a man named Marvin Barnett, age thirty-one),
and I know he don’t take home every penny that
come into his hand.
JO: So where does the rest go?
BW: I don’t know that. Don’t know about no
“board” neither. Heard rumors about one dude
who runs the whole show, but not like anyone’s
ever seen him, so it’s probably bullshit.
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263
JO: So where do you see yourself in five years?
The main man?
BW: Hell no, man. The main man got too many
problems. There’s a reason it’s called the crown
of thorns. You only sit at the top for so long be
fore someone decides he don’t like your way of
doing business. Guys in my spot, as long as we
keep our head down and keep selling, we be all
right. Might not make as much money as the big
man, but I’ll be alive a lot longer.
I read the interview again. It wasn’t much, but even
then Willingham seemed to think there was some higher
power, some authority figure running the show. The
strange thing is that Butch seemed adamant about not
doing drugs, about respecting the hierarchy of which he
was a part. I wondered if there was a chance Willingham was killed over the book, but the book came out
long after Butch was killed.
In addition, most of the numerous references to
dealers were protected by fake names, monikers used
to protect them in case their employers sought retribu
tion along the lines that Butch had received. From
Jack’s perspective, he probably figured he didn’t need
to protect Butch Willingham’s name since the man was
already dead.
I found it to be a little too much of a coincidence that
just weeks after this interview, the man was found dead
with the words The Fury scrawled in his own blood. It
didn’t seem like Butch would have overstepped his
bounds, but I couldn’t be sure. Dealing wasn’t exactly
the most legitimate enterprise, so it was entirely
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possible he was blowing smoke up Jack’s ass just to
make himself sound like a good soldier.
Regardless, something had happened in those weeks
between the interview and Butch’s death. He’d done or
seen something that required him being “made gone.”
Looking back through the interview, I noticed this
line of questioning:
JO: How do you come to grips knowing that the
product you sell will be used by children?
The Fury (2009) Page 25
