The Darkness - Jason Pinter [95]
Avenue A in half an hour."
"I'll be there."
"One more thing, Morgan."
"What's up?"
"Do you like the suit you're wearing?"
"I guess so. It was one of the first ones I bought when
I got my job in banking."
"Too bad. Because you're never going to wear it again
after today."
37
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Jack said. He was staring out the
window of our cab as we sped uptown to meet William
Hollinsworth.
Rather than responding, I studied Jack's face. For
some reason it made me think about his clean desk, how
for some reason there was something holding him back
from returning fully to a normal life.
We'd never had a chance to have a real talk about
Paulina's article and what it had done to him, and it was
probably for the better. When a man's reputation, and
maybe his soul, is nearly destroyed, the last thing he
wants to do is revisit it. But it was clear that Jack hadn't
quite gotten past it, that he was still between two worlds.
The wistful look on his face confirmed my thoughts.
It was not the look of a face simply admiring the beauty
of a city, but the look of a man who wasn't sure if he'd
ever see these sights again.
Sixth Avenue was crowded, full of taxis, livery cabs
and black company cars carrying executives and bluecollar workers alike home from a long day's work. Traffic
in the city had actually gotten better over the last few
months, but it was a wolf wrapped in sheep's clothing.
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Jason Pinter
The decrease in traffic was primarily due to a cutback
in both taxis and hired car services, but also a massive
drop in truck deliveries that ordinarily clogged up New
York's arteries during the early morning. With so many
stores and restaurants closing due to massive revenue
drops, there was natural belt tightening in the quantity and
frequency of transports it took to ship in new supplies.
Nevertheless, traveling through the city during the
seemingly endless rush hour times was still a harrowing
proposition, and the fact that it took forty-five minutes
rather than an hour to go from midtown to upper Manhattan was a small victory at best.
We eked past taxis crawling slower than they needed
to, trying to squeeze out a few extra pennies from their
charges. Businessmen who would normally be glued to
their BlackBerries in the backseat, blissfully unaware of
this common practice, now stared at the rising fare ready
to berate the driver for taking his sweet time.
Prior to leaving, I left Curt Sheffield a message filling
him in on where we were headed. He needed to know
what was going on. Like Paulina said, I didn't know who
to trust, but I wanted to leave a trail just in case. I could
trust Curt to follow it if something bad happened.
We merged onto Central Park West, and several minutes later arrived at the Columbia campus. Jack paid the
driver and tucked the receipt into his wallet. We got out,
checking our pockets to make sure all our belongings had
arrived with us.
A few months back, I'd forgotten my wallet in a taxi,
and was dismayed to think I'd have to spend the whole
day in line at the DMV while explaining the situation to
my credit card companies and, worst of all, Wallace
Langston, who would need to order me a new corporate
The Darkness
273
card. Yet just half an hour after realizing the gaffe, I
received an e-mail from a Mr. Alex Kolodej, the kindly
driver who'd found my wallet in the backseat of his cab,
put two and two together between my driver's license and
business card, and even drove by my office to drop the
wallet off.
He refused any sort of reward, and drove off with the
plain smile of a Good Samaritan.
Amanda, on the other hand, had forgotten her purse at
a bar just a few weeks ago, and returned home later that
night to find no less than twenty-five hundred dollars in
charges racked up. Ironically they were not at jewelry or
electronic stores, the bastion of people looking to make a
quick splurge with a stolen card, but rather from places like
Home Depot and Ace Hardware. A sign that whoever had
taken her bag was way