The Darkness - Jason Pinter [107]
sale of drugs like the Darkness is going directly to the city
itself. I'm saying that not only is our government turning
a blind eye, but it's taking a cut of the profits."
"The layoffs, the deficits," I said. "You're saying
they're trying to make up for budget shortfalls by taking
a cut of drug payoffs?"
"Words to live by, especially in politics. If something
worked twenty years ago, it'll probably work again now."
Just then I heard my cell phone ring. I went over to pick
it up, but when I saw the caller ID I stopped. Looked at Jack.
"Who is it?" he said.
I shook my head, confused.
"It's Curt Sheffield," I said.
"Curt," Jack said, taken aback. "Well, pick it up!"
I answered the phone. Tried to play it cool.
"Hey, man, what's up?"
Then I listened as Curt explained to me what was
going to happen in just a few minutes.
When I hung up, I looked at Jack and said, "You
need to leave."
Needless to say this was not exactly what he was expecting to hear.
"What the hell are you talking about, Henry?"
The Darkness
307
"In less than half an hour, somebody is going to come
here to sell me drugs. And unless you want to try and pass
off as my pot-addicted uncle or something, we can't have
any trace of you in this apartment."
43
Curt Sheffield had only been working for the NYPD for
five years, but the past two days made it feel like a lifetime.
Two days. Twelve dead. All deaths related to this new
drug, the Darkness.
For years, New York was considered one of the safest
big cities in the world. The crime that existed was relegated to back alleys and dingy apartments. Upstanding
citizens had little to fear as long as they used common
sense.
The drug dealers were easy to smoke out. They were
usually junkies themselves. They sold because that's all
they had, all they knew. They were uneducated, unloved,
and an honest day's work for an honest day's pay was a
foreign concept.
And that's why dealers were so easy to break.
In real life, those dealers in their teens and twenties
didn't have any sort of real loyalty to the drug lords. It
wasn't like television. There was no "game" and no
loyalty beyond a wad of cash. Your employer was simply
whoever could pay that day.
When a man making seventeen thousand dollars a year
selling crack is forced to choose between turning in a man
The Darkness
309
he barely knows or spending five years behind bars, the
decision was always easy.
That's why people on the top never lasted long. They
could never offer the people below them a life worth risking on the streets. Every moment was fleeting, but when
push came to shove a fistful of crumpled twenties wasn't
enough to keep someone from saving their own ass.
This drug, though, was different. The narcotics division was sweeping all those back alleys, talking to all
their sources, offering all their informants good, hard
cash for one tip that could loosen the first thread.
So far, they'd come up empty-handed.
And it wasn't because the informants had suddenly
grown balls or a sense of loyalty. It's that they didn't know.
However this product was being moved, it was being
done away from the streets, away from the bottom feeders, away from the men and women who sold the very
same drugs they ingested.
This was different. And that's what scared Curt the most.
This city had the best police force in the world, but
now that force was being slashed like an unfortunately
located forest. A thousand cops, vanished from the streets,
victims of a mayor legally beholden to a budget that had
come in four billion dollars in the red.
Curt stopped to pick up a pizza on the way home. Half
mushroom, half pepperoni. He had no bigger plans than
to throw on his Rutgers sweatshirt, lounge on the couch
with a few slices and a few beers and flip between games
and late-night Cinemax.
As he approached his apartment building, he noticed
a man hanging on the street corner. He was wearing a
T-shirt and sweatpants, and had a pair of slippers covering
his bare feet. Ordinarily such a thing