The Fury - Jason Pinter [63]
about to can their coach. I heard Evelyn Waterstone
chewing out a reporter who'd misspelled the word
borough on his story. All of these sounds make me
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smile. Who would have thought this kind of chaos could
be an antidote to everything that had been going on?
I made my way down the hall, toward Wallace's office.
"Henry, what's shakin', my man?"
I turned slowly, eyes closed, my stomach already
feeling sick. Tony Valentine was standing in the
hallway, a goofy grin on his face. At first something
looked different about him, then I noticed how unnatu
rally smooth his forehead looked. And not many people
could smile without creating smile lines. I wondered if
he had a Botox expense account as part of his salary
package.
"Listen, Parker, I got something for you. I know
you've got a girlfriend--don't we all? But there's this
actress... can't tell you her name, but it rhymes with
Bennifer Maniston. She's a good friend of mine and she's
in town for a few days. I was thinking the two of you
could go out to dinner. Nothing special or fancy, but
tomorrow it's in my column. You get great press for ca
noodling with a star, she gets good press for dating a nice
young reporter who won't ditch her for a costar. Sound
good? Say the word and you've got reservations for two
at Babbo."
I stared at Tony for a minute, then said, "Goodbye."
I turned around and headed for Wallace's office.
He was sitting down, elbows on his desk, papers
splayed out in front of him. "Henry, sit down," he said.
The last few months had been tough on Wallace. Jack's
departure had hit the paper hard, but Wallace person
ally. Harvey Hillerman, the publisher of the Gazette,
had been eyeing the bottom line closer than ever.
Whether Jack had lost a few miles of his fastball was
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to some extent irrelevant. He still brought readers to the
paper, and he knew New York City better than anyone
alive. His name off the masthead hurt our readership,
bit into our circulation and took a bite from our adver
tising revenue. There was no replacing him. We were
all praying for his recovery, but Wallace was praying for
more than that. He needed Jack for the paper. For his
job. For all our jobs, in a way.
I envisioned myself as the kind of reporter who could
ease the Gazette into the next generation, but I never
saw that happening without Jack. He wasn't someone
who simply disappeared. He had to leave on his own
terms, when he was ready.
And having known Jack for a few years, having
gotten close enough to him for the man to confide in me,
I knew that before his battle with the bottle nearly killed
him and his reputation, he had no desire to go quietly
into that good night.
"Thanks again for seeing me."
"No problem," he said. "My door is always open."
I laughed. "So I wanted to talk about Jack. Specifi
cally something he wrote a long time ago."
"Shoot."
"It wasn't for the paper."
Wallace leaned back, curious.
"What is it then?"
"Twenty years ago, Jack wrote a book called
Through the Darkness. It was about the rise of drugs and
drug-related violence. Do you remember it? Jack was
working at the Gazette when it was published."
"I sure do. O'Donnell took a year off to write that
book, and after it came out and became a bestseller
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none of us expected him back. We figured he'd take the
money and work on books full-time, especially when
Hollywood came calling. But the news runs in that
man's veins. Leaving never even occurred to him."
"It still hasn't," I said. Awkwardness choked the
room. I had no idea if Wallace had even been in contact
with Jack since he left, but the man's downcast eyes let
me know he was happy to talk about Jack's past, but
less so discussing the man's future. Part of me felt as
if Wallace and Hillerman bore some responsibility for
Jack's condition. They knew his alcoholism had been
getting worse, but other than a few halfhearted BandAid measures they'd stand by, let him turn in substan
dard material, drinking Baileys with his coffee during
war