The Fury - Jason Pinter [64]
they let it slide because they didn't want to believe it
could destroy a man with his reputation. Or maybe they
turned their backs because they needed to. Needed him.
"So what about the book?" Wallace asked, his voice
sounding less patient, a little less happy I was there.
"Butch Willingham," I said. "He was a street dealer
killed in '88. His death would have gone unnoticed--
like most of his colleagues, if you will--except that
unlike the others he survived his execution for a few
minutes. He had just enough time to write two words,
using his own blood. Do you remember what those
words were?"
"No, I can't say I do. I haven't read the book in at
least a decade."
"I remember," I said. "Not too often you forget some
thing like that. The two words Willingham wrote were
'The Fury.' Do they ring a bell now?"
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Wallace sat there without taking his eyes off me. I
waited, unsure of what he was going to say. Instead, he
just sat there, waiting for the blanks to be filled in.
Since Wallace's memory didn't seem to be jogged
much, I pulled a copy of the tattered paperback from my
pocket. Moving around to the side of Wallace's desk--
and realizing I hadn't ever viewed the room from that
perspective before--I showed him the passage it came
from.
"Look at this," I said. "Tell me if you remember
anything about it, or Jack writing it."
Wallace took a pair of thin reading glasses from his
desk drawer, slipped them on and read the passage.
After a few seconds, he took the book from my hands
and began to read further. I could tell from his eyes and
intense concentration something was coming into focus.
He was remembering. Excitement surged through me.
This was something, I knew it. It had to be.
"The Fury," Wallace said. "If I recall correctly, it
was a big nothing."
I stepped back around, sat down, confused. "What
do you mean?"
"I remember when this happened, the Willingham
case got a little press for a day or two, mainly over the
gruesome details.You're right, it's not too often someone
writes words in their own blood while dying, and the
press, present company often included, loves the chance
to hyperbolize and scare people to death with Stephen
King-style visuals. O'Donnell did look into this, inter
viewing dozens of dealers, punks and scumbags."
"And?"
"For a while he was convinced that there was
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Jason Pinter
an...entity...I guess that's what you could call it...
named the Fury. It was the kind of word that existed
only on the lips of people involved in drugs, mainly
dealing. The Fury was some kind of mythical demon,
some kind of human being so cold-blooded and cruel
that nobody dared cross it."
"All those people killed during those years," I said,
the picture coming into view. "Jack thought this Fury
was behind it all. I have no idea if that's a person, an
organization or a code for something else. But it's in
there for a reason."
"That's right," Wallace said. "If I recall, the first
draft of this book was a good hundred or so pages
longer, but Jack's publisher balked at a lot of what he'd
written about in the chapters on the Fury. There were
no eyewitness accounts. It began and ended with Wil
lingham. Nobody was willing to talk. They felt Jack was
stretching too far with the blood angle, and by printing
chapters about some boogeyman, some all-powerful
kingpin, it weakened his other arguments. Made him
look like he was aiming for sensationalism rather than
good, solid journalism."
"Who won the argument?"
"Well," Wallace said, "you see how long your edition
of the book is? It was going to be another hundred or
so longer."
"So why did he leave that one part in?" I asked. "If
everything else relating to this was taken out, why did
they let him leave Butch Willingham writing that
before he died?"
"If I remember--and you'll forgive me if my
memory bank doesn't access twenty-year-old informa
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191
tion as readily as it used to--Jack threatened to pull the
plug on the whole book at that