The Darkness - Jason Pinter [18]
looking for." There was no trace of 718 Enterprises whatsoever. It was simply gone.
And as Jack and I stood there in the morning sunlight,
I couldn't help but think about the hundreds of people
who went about their day oblivious to this. Who'd walked
by this building for perhaps years, unaware that it was a
drug refueling station. And that all of a sudden whatever
had been there had suddenly been packed up and shipped
off as quickly and as easily as a parcel.
"Back to the office," Jack said. "We're not going to
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learn anything standing on the corner waiting for melanoma to sink in."
His hands were on his hips, a look on his face that
showed he was pissed off but wouldn't stop here. I'd
never seen Jack work, unless you counted watching him
hunched over a keyboard sipping coffee that smelled suspiciously like something you'd find on tap at an Irish pub.
I had the same gene. The "hell if I'll stop now" gene.
I smiled inwardly as Jack ran into the street to hail a cab,
moving like a man half his age. Not only did he have a
story to chase, but after months spent away from the game,
this was the closest he'd been to fresh meat in a long time.
"There has to be a building manager," I said. "A corporation who cashes the lease payments."
"Great minds, Henry. Great minds." He told the driver
to take us back to Rockefeller Plaza. I felt my cell phone
vibrate, picked it up, saw Amanda had left me a text
message. I opened the mail. It read, Luv u. I smiled. Sent
her one back that read, u 2 babe.
Then just before I closed the phone, I saw that I had
another unopened text. This one was from Curt Sheffield.
It read: News out about Ken Tsang's murder. Undercover cops say dealers are scared shitless, holing up.
Informants running like roaches.
And the text ended with one line that gave me chills.
Message delivered.
7
Morgan Isaacs didn't want to wake up. He was lying in
bed, forcing his eyelids closed, even though a few quick
peeks told him it was after ten o'clock and the day had
started without him. Again.
It had been just a week since Morgan had met with the
real estate broker as well as his dad's accountant (who
didn't charge him, thankfully, chalking it up to years of
family service). Both advised him, without a moment of
hesitation, to sell his two-bedroom apartment on Park
Avenue. Morgan pleaded his case, said he'd be back on
his feet in no time, but Morgan wasn't trying to convince
the advisor as much as himself.
He'd have to give it up. All of it.
It was a sweet pad, with nearly seventeen hundred
square feet, brand-new appliances, a hundred-fiftysquare-foot terrace, a fifty-two-inch plasma and a view
that most Manhattanites would chop off their left thumb
for. It was the kind of place Morgan dreamed of when he
first enrolled in business school five years ago, taking on
the kind of debt that would choke a third world country.
Sure, there were bigger apartments in NYC, but you had
to start somewhere. And even with the real estate market
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taking a nosedive recently you couldn't find a good twobedroom for under a million three. To get the three-and
four-bedroom pads you had to plunk down close to two
mil, and even though his debts were almost all paid off
he thankfully had decided to stick with the twofer until
his next promotion.
But then it all crashed down faster than a load of bricks.
The rumors began to swirl about a month ago that the
bank Morgan worked at as a trader was having tough
times, that its liquidity was nowhere near what the CEOs
were claiming. Then he read a newspaper article saying
there was a chance it would be bought out by one of the
company's competitors. Then, a week ago, Morgan got a
call from his boss at eleven-thirty on a Saturday night,
telling him to be at the office at 9:00 a.m. Sunday morning.
Morgan was there, dressed in a suit and carrying his
briefcase, unsure of what to expect. When he got to the
conference room he was informed, along with several
dozen of his colleagues, that