The Fury - Jason Pinter [60]
under that beating stream for a long time, until the heat
became so unbearable that we ended up in bed, naked,
clinging to each other like we always did when we
wanted the world to melt away for a little while.
I left Amanda sleeping in bed and crept into the living
room. Booting the computer up, I poured myself a cup
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of ice coffee from the jug we kept in the fridge. I took a
sip. Stale. It'd probably been sitting in there close to a
week. I checked the freezer, but we were fresh out of
grounds. Instead, I poured a healthy dollop of milk,
added enough sweetener to make my teeth chatter and
sat down.
Our Internet connection was spotty at best, so it was
a sigh of relief when my home page came up. I'd
changed my preferences so that the Gazette's page
would load whenever I opened my browser. I took a
moment to read the latest stories, then went to Google
and began my search.
I typed in the name "Scott Callahan." To no great
surprise, over four thousand entries came up. To refine
the search, I added "New York."
That narrowed it down to under a thousand. There
were a few wedding notices and Web sites for law
offices, but unfortunately none of them had any
pictures. I scrolled through a few dozen pages hoping
for something that would perhaps be linked to the Scott
Callahan I followed the other day, but nothing came up.
I went back to the Google home page and typed in
"Kyle Evans" and "New York." Two thousand entries
came up. I sighed, having no choice but to slog through.
Nothing seemed to be terribly interesting until the
fourth page. The page title was "Dozens laid off in
wake of financial collapse." I clicked the link.
The article was from a financial magazine, dated
about six months ago. It was a feature on the recent
meltdowns of several financial institutions and the
decision to lay off massive numbers of workers, some
of whom had just graduated from business school. The
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Jason Pinter
author had interviewed several recently fired employ
ees, including one man named Kyle Evans.
The section read:
Kyle Evans expected to pay off his student loans
in a matter of months, having taken a six-figure
job right after receiving his MBA. Yet within
weeks of his first day, Evans, a twenty-seven
year-old Wharton graduate, was unemployed and
unable to find a job.
"Between undergrad and Penn I owe about a
hundred thousand dollars," Evans said. "I was
going to have a bitch of a time paying it back
anyway, but now what do I do?"
Though the article was posted on the Web, there were
several photos taken of its subjects. They were small
thumbnails, and according to the site these were exclu
sive and had not been printed in the physical magazine.
And there, in a group of three other men and woman
his age, was the very Kyle Evans I'd seen on the street
the other day. His hair was shorter and he was about ten
pounds heavier, but there was no doubt it was him.
Suddenly Kyle's career choice made more sense.
With no income, and training for jobs that didn't exist
anymore, Kyle had decided to take another route to
paying off his loans, joining an industry that didn't have
as many down cycles. One that could afford him the
same lifestyle. The same money.
It was a fair assumption that Scott Callahan--and
maybe some, if not all, the other briefcase men--were
victims of the same circumstances as Kyle. If you
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thought about it, who would make better drug couriers?
These people were young, energetic, highly motivated,
perhaps by money above all else. And, most of all, they
owed. And if they owed enough, they'd be willing to
take a few risks, break the law for a while before they
found their footing. But who was employing them?
What was 718 Enterprises?
I pulled "718 Enterprises" into Google, Yahoo! and
half a dozen other search engines. Less than a dozen hits
came up, none of them looking as if they had anything
to do with a company of that name or with any relation
to New York. I twiddled my thumbs. I'd never been