The Darkness - Jason Pinter [63]
on his elbows looked like they were being worn away.
"Where the hell have you been?" Wallace said.
"Meeting with a cop about the Kaiser investigation,"
I said. "He's going to find out what he can about the guy
who might be responsible."
"That's dandy," Wallace said. "While you were out
pussyfooting with your boys in blue, did you happen
to see this?"
He walked over to his desk and picked up a copy of
The Darkness
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that morning's New York Dispatch. Wallace stomped over
to me, holding the paper much as you would a bag of dog
poop. I looked at Jack, wanted to see if he had anything
to say, but the old man sat there, head down.
Wallace handed me the paper. "Read it," he said.
I looked at the front page. Immediately my stomach
lurched up to my throat, frustration and anger welling
up inside me.
I turned to where the front page article continued, and
read the whole thing. Slowly. Word by word. Then I
closed the paper and threw it across the room, cursing
loud enough that Wallace's secretary would probably
have to apologize to whoever she was on the phone with.
"How the hell did she..." I said.
"Don't you dare ask that question," Wallace said. "It's
your job to know what goes on in this city. You handle
the crime beat. It is your duty to know every nook and
cranny of this island, from the mayor's office to the bums
who live beneath the subway. For something like this to
get past you...you must have been asleep at the wheel."
He looked at Jack, waited for a response. "Either that or
the two of you have become so narrow-minded with this
Kaiser murder and Gaines follow-up that you can't sniff
what's under your nose."
"I didn't know anything about this," I said. "Paulina...I
don't know where she got it. And I don't know which
cops she spoke to, but if you look at the article they all
spoke on condition of anonymity. I just met with my man
in the NYPD, and he's as clued in as anyone. He didn't
mention a word of this, and he doesn't keep things from
me. Not like this. Something about this piece doesn't
pass the smell test, Wallace."
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Jason Pinter
Wallace picked the newspaper back up. He held the
cover out for us both to see.
On the front page of the Dispatch was an enlarged
picture of what looked like a small stone, possibly a piece
of gravel, pitch-black in color with a rough texture.
The headline next to the photo read The Darkness.
The subtitle said, The Drug That's About to Take Man-
hattan Back to the Stone Age.
25
Darkness Rising
As a deadly new drug hits the streets,
police and citizens silently fear a return
of chaos a quarter century old
Most New Yorkers did not know Kenneth Tsang.The
son of Chinese immigrants who passed away before
he graduated high school, Tsang received his MBA
from Wharton and spent most of his twenties raking
in the dough while working at two prestigious investment firms. Most New Yorkers did not know that,
despite his income,Tsang owed nearly half a million
dollars in taxes and mortgage payments, and that he
burned through his money nearly as fast as it came in.
Most NewYorkers know thatTsang was found dead
this week, his body pulverized and found floating in
the East River.What they do not know is that a balloon
marker was tied to the buoy that Tsang's body was
tethered to.They do not know that inside that balloon
were half a dozen small, black rocks, left by Tsang's
killer. These rocks were no bigger than a piece of
gravel, but each contain enough destructive power to
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Jason Pinter
clinch a plastic bag around the head of a city already
gasping for air.
Now, come with me for a moment. I have a brief
history lesson to impart upon you.
For those of us who lived through New York in the
1980s,much of the information within this article will
ring horrifyingly familiar.Let's backtrack for a minute,
about twenty-five years ago to 1984. George Orwell
would have been proud. Or terrified.
New York as we know it today did not exist.Following the oil shortage of the 1970s,