The Darkness - Jason Pinter [47]
too. Good-looking guy."
"Black? White?"
"White," she said. "He had blond hair. Kind of wavy."
"Any tattoos or identifiable features?"
"Not that I could see. He was wearing a suit. I think
his eyes were green, but I'm not sure."
"Did he walk with a limp? Anything else that could
identify him in that way?"
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"I don't think so," she said. "He made some sort of reference to fighting in a war. I don't know if he was telling
the truth or not. He's not an old guy, so he would have
had to fight in the last twenty, twenty-five years. And he
talked like he'd lost someone. Someone close to him.
Maybe a family member. Again I don't know if that was
a lie or not."
"Is there anything else?"
Paulina thought for a moment. "Chester," she said.
"He said his name was Chester."
An alarm went off in my head. Chester. Blond hair. It
couldn't be...could it?
"What are you thinking?" Paulina said. "You look like
something just made sense."
"No, nothing," I lied. "Just thinking how I'm going to
approach this."
She nodded. "You have my cell phone. Don't call
me at work."
"No problem." We both stood up. Paulina extended her
hand. I looked at it for a moment before shaking it.
"Henry?" she said.
"Yeah?"
"One more thing."
"What's that?"
"Drugs," she said. "This guy...he has something to do
with drugs. A lot of them."
"What do you mean?"
Paulina looked down at her cup, then back up. There was
a look in her eyes I hadn't seen, and I could tell that something was eating at her beyond what she was telling me.
"Just trust me," she said. "Drugs."
"I'll look into it."
"Henry?"
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Jason Pinter
"What?"
"Thank you."
I shook my head, laughed. "I bet that was hard as hell
for you to say."
"You'll never know. And don't expect for it to ever
happen again."
I shook my head. "You don't have to thank me for
anything. We haven't found him yet. And to be honest, I
don't know if I could turn down this request from anyone."
Paulina smiled, but I noticed a slight smirk in there,
like she found that statement funny. "That's why I love
you, Henry Parker. Everyone's knight in shining armor."
"Goodbye, Paulina. I'll call you when I have something."
I turned around and walked out of the diner, hoping
she wouldn't notice that my palms were practically bleeding sweat. She couldn't know. Not yet.
Because I was pretty certain that the same man who
threatened to kill Paulina Cole's daughter was the same
man who just blew Brett Kaiser halfway to hell.
19
It sure didn't look like a financial company. In fact, if
Chester had told Morgan that they made rivets and
girders, or maybe the occasional swamp creature there,
he would have been more likely to bite.
They were somewhere in Queens, a borough just off
the island of Manhattan but a world that couldn't have
looked or felt any more different. It wasn't that Morgan
hadn't traveled to the outer boroughs, but as soon as he
landed his first job the rest of New York City became a
foreign territory. He used to have friends in Queens,
Brooklyn, Staten Island. But when you work fourteen
hours a day, you hardly have the energy to get out there.
So he kissed that life goodbye, and hadn't thought much
about it since.
For a brief moment, as they were driving up to the front
gate of what looked like an abandoned factory, Morgan had
second thoughts. They only lasted a moment, but they were
pure, pungent. A shot of hesitation mixed with an ounce of
fright, stirred with a straw of what the hell am I doing here?
Did he really know this guy, Chester? Sure he came
with a recommendation from Ken Tsang, but Ken was
dead so obviously his hunches didn't always pan out.
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Jason Pinter
But then Morgan remembered his debts. His mortgage.
That bank account that had swollen so large and was now
deflating like a punctured balloon. Even if this turned out
to be nothing, even if Chester was full of crap and offered
him nothing more than being a three-card monte dealer
in Times Square, it was worth the trip. Not